Teacher: Hurricane Sandy a Result of 'Massive Theft of Atmospheric Commons'

Social justice activist teachers see natural disasters like the recent Hurricane Sandy as opportunities to bring their political agendas into the classroom.

And they rarely miss an opportunity.

Writing for the far-left Zinn Education Project (named for the late communist professor Howard Zinn), Portland, Oregon high school teacher Tim Swinehart opined:

“Hurricane Sandy, and the superstorms that will follow, are not just acts of nature—they are products of a massive theft of the atmospheric commons shared by all life on the planet. Every dollar of profit made by fossil fuel companies relies on polluting our shared atmosphere with harmful greenhouse gases, stealing what belongs to us all. But if we don’t teach students the history of the commons, they’ll have a hard time recognizing what—and who—is responsible for today’s climate crisis.”

He goes on to blame the “massive theft” on private companies that pollute the environment, and complains that textbooks have a bias toward treating the buying and selling of land as “normal” and even “inevitable.” In other words, private ownership is bad. Do you see where this is going?

So what is his solution? To begin teaching students that there needs to be a renewed effort to reclaim “the commons” for the collective benefit of all and drive a stake through the heart of those that profit from the earth and its atmosphere.

Because of that profit-making – or “theft” – we’re now experiencing global warming, melting ice caps and more destructive storms like Sandy, according to Swinehart. So students should learn about “the culmination of hundreds of years of privatizing and commodifying the natural world,” he believes.

Another radical education organization, Rethinking Schools, wrote that the “climate crisis” is an “education crisis” and teachers must take action in the classroom and school districts must lend full support.

“We can do a lot in our individual classrooms—but not everything. We need our professional organizations and school districts to provide professional development that is cross-disciplinary and that deals forthrightly with the climate crisis. We need administrators and educational policy makers to recognize that ‘skills’ that can and must be taught in the context of a curriculum about things that matter, including the climate. We need our districts to demand curriculum materials, including textbooks, that are honest and that equip students to understand what’s at stake.