Thursday, 22 March 2012

Indoctrination Doesn't Always Work...

Successive governments here in the UK have been banging on about pollution, climate change, global warming, damage to the the ozone layer and greenhouse gases for at least as long as I have been teaching (and probably longer) to the extent that these topics appear with monotonous regularity on the school curriculum, particularly in Science. Rather in the way that the History curriculum seems to revolve around the trenches in World War I and the Nazis in World War II, this constant rehashing of the topics means that students "know" about it all, but they promptly switch off when they hear the key phrases.

This was demonstrated in answers to a test question I have been marking. The question was about the decline of a deer population over time. Suggestions for the cause of this decline were solicited...

In addition to the expected answers of "increased predation by wolves," "hunting" and "disease" I noted several mentions of "global warming" and "climate change." Not surprising, when these are such favourite buzzwords. But the answer which had me howling with laughter demonstrated the typical teenager's muddled thinking:

"The hole in the ozone layer is melting."

I would just like to add a disclaimer - I haven't mentioned any of these topics to the class in question!
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2 comments:

  1. Ben Trovato7:56 am

    But surely that's the right answer!

    As the hole melts, there must be more hole in the atmosphere, and as the hole is greater than the sum of the harts, deer are naturally going to decline!

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  2. gemoftheocean6:49 pm

    Sometime kids can be gloriously cynical. The Crescat's youngster has a real left-wing type teacher who was evidently much enamored of the OWLS movement when it started. Apparently she was in a state of euphoria re: how glorious the practice of pure democracy was within OWLS. She told the class of 'hand signals' that they use to show support or disapproval. One of the signals, apparently, was a raised hand with wiggling fingers to show someone was not so hot on an idea. Well...Crescat's son and a friend of his soon thereafter started using the sign when in class to flash it at each other any time their teacher said something they deemed 'stupid.' Let us say that the instructor was not 'amused.'

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