Editor:
Re: “Indoctrination for the New Green Age,” April 5.
As a career educator, I was appalled by John Gleeson’s condescending, mean-spirited response to emails from a group of Grade 5 students – emails which, just to set the tone, he tells us he retrieved from his junk mail folder.
On the basis of a few recurrent phrases, Gleeson concludes that the students are simply regurgitating talking points. That such phrases are the product of spirited classroom discussion is a possibility he wilfully ignores. He hasn’t the grace to thank students for their efforts, or even acknowledge the worthiness of their cause.
Gleeson accuses teachers of “loading (students) up with fear and righteousness.” What condescension! Does he not think 11-year olds are acutely aware, and rightly afraid, of climate change? As for their “righteousness,” what right-thinking adult objects to young people sharing their passion for important issues?
The myth of classroom brainwashing is a favourite canard of the Right. Would it therefore be fair to suggest that by dismissing these emails as the work of teacher-ideologues, Gleeson is regurgitating the talking points of Fox News?
Gleeson ends his piece with the risible claim that the emails are evidence of looming totalitarianism. Relax, John, democracy will survive, and a few supportive words for a group of 11-year olds will do nothing to hasten the decline of civilization.
Ian McLatchie, Davis Bay
