Totalitarian Teaching
I will always be indebted to many in the Salt Lake City, Utah area. The surgeons, physicians, other medical doctors, nurses, paramedical staff, and administrative staff at both the Huntsman Cancer Institute and the University of Utah have eradicated the large tumor that diseased my wife’s liver. The malignant growth was discovered in 2016, a rarity for someone who has stayed away from alcohol or had any form of hepatitis. A local oncologist told her besides the liver cancer, she also had ovarian cancer, in both ovaries and she had merely a few months to live.
While putting on a falsely brave face during the ensuing days, we wept together every night for three agonizing weeks. Our solitary hope, and one of desperation, was a pending appointment at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City. After reviewing the case, the attending Huntsman oncologist, a Spaniard, concluded “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of this”. The inference was they would assemble a “tumor board”, evaluate the situation, and set up a schedule for removing cancer from her body. That night for the first time in almost a month, we slept on dry pillows. Furthermore, the diagnosis of ovarian cancer proved false.
After what seems like an incalculable number of trips from our Idaho home to Salt Lake City, from all indications my wife is currently cancer free.
The residents of Salt Lake City and the State of Utah do have their faults, however – one big one is accepting climate advocate Mitt Romney into their fold and in 2019 providing him with a United States Senate seat in Washington, DC.
At the very end of Greater Salt Lake City, just 9 miles from Provo’s Brigham Young University is the city of Spanish Fork. With a population of 43,000, it is served by the Nebo School District. Nebo means ‘prophet’ in Hebrew and is also the name of the southernmost mountain of the Wasatch Range. Mount Nebo is located 20 miles directly south of Spanish Fork. According to Wikipedia, “Spanish Fork has a predominantly Latter Day Saints (LDS) population” and most practicing the LDS theology are politically conservative. Since conservatives, generally, are less likely to accept all the tenets of anthropogenic climate change, this can be construed as insightful and pertinent in considering the balance of this article.
On March 7, 2023, sixth-grade students in the District’s Spring Canyon Middle school were given insects to eat. Of the experience teacher Kim Cutler said, “Middle schoolers loved the 'ewww' factor, many of them gave bugs a try (and even a few staff members!). Many thanks to our English teachers for creating fun and engaging lessons," and further contended, “Yeah, because we're killing the world by raising cows and animals.” The italicizing and bolding are mine - because note, these were not even science teachers.
As the article states, “The climate change assignment instructed sixth-graders to write an argumentative essay, but did not permit students to disagree”. This is exactly the dictatorial method of instruction in current curriculums everywhere. Teachers have been programmed to believe climate change is a component of a progressive critical theory. This was evident when the teacher explained to a student’s parent that, “humans must eat bugs to protect the environment was provided in district training.” Thus to assimilate students into a world of opposing thought and critical thinking is not to be tolerated.
The teacher told one complaining student, “It's kind of weird that I gave you a topic where there is only one right answer” citing there was no evidence to support another side. A teacher saying that any science has only one answer is actually tragic and a travesty of teaching. Science requires reproducibility, replicability, and observability and it must have an outcome of similar circumstances each time just to be somewhat trusted, however, no science is infallible or absolutely empirical. Imagine saying that to a student, whose fundamental inquisitive right is to explore and investigate all answers, irrespective of diversity in thought, except the guiding instructor wholly prevents these intrinsic liberties.
There is no need to wonder why large percentages of youth have been made so fearful of a world that has been declared, albeit falsely, to catastrophically crumble all around them. Even if she was still living, Patsy Cline could no longer truthfully sing, “If I could see the world through the eyes of a child, what a wonderful world it would be” simply because the child’s view of the world is more and more impaired and injured by political alarm and anxiety.
This is the rotting way of the world that we must continuously battle.
