In an article entitled INTERNAL DOCUMENTS: The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax on ThinkProgress Green,

http://thinkprogress.org/...

Brad Johnson reports that Gates, the Koch brothers and other corporate education privatizers are funding the development of a K-12 curriculum that teaches students that global warming is really nothing more than a crack-pot theory.

Not content with their assault on public education, the Koch brothers, Gates, Broad, Walmart Foundation, et al., now scheme to dumb down science education as well. They resort to the flat-earthers' epithet, "it's only a theory" to devalue the issue of global warming. Of course global warming is a theory, but it is a theory supported by massive, massive evidence and peer-reviewed science literature. That is what science is all about. To call an idea is a theory is not to discount it as these folks imply; any idea in science is always subject to revision as we learn more. But it is by now a time-honored tactic of flat-earthers, who prize "belief" above all knowledge, to demean science ideas as mere theory. It's not surprising. Indeed, this move is a logical next step in producing a generation of compliant, incurious workers for whom simply believing what they are told is preferable to questioning what they hear/read. They want to put a tutu on the hippo and call it a ballerina and train people to believe in the ballerina.

In fact, what they are trying to do (with alarming success) will lead to a generation of steeply devalued human capital in the US economy. People who don't question, and who don't know anything, who don't know how to question,and who are not going to be problem solvers and innovators. They are just going to be followers. If we become a nation of followers, who will we follow? The next demagogue who comes along with plausible lies? History teaches us that this scenario is a recipe for unspeakable disaster.

The education privatizers and their efforts to destroy public education and discourage thoughtful inquiry are antithetical in every way to the life of a democratic, equitable society, and ultimately, threaten our national security.