For generations America’s public schools have indoctrinated our children with the dogma of Darwinism: life arose and developed by chance, no Creator involved. Now they’re poised to indoctrinate them with another dogma: catastrophic, global warming—not just global warming, but catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). Never mind that in both cases thousands of scientists reject the dogma. Never mind that in both cases the theories fail to account for large numbers of empirical facts. Never mind that in both cases there is strong Biblical ground to question or reject the dogmas. One of the aims of In His Image 2012, the Cornwall Alliance’s new educational venture, is to prepare environmental stewardship curriculum for grades K–12—curriculum that will be firmly rooted in Biblical worldview, theology, and ethics, coupled with excellent science and economics. We plan to make a first edition of that curriculum suitable for Christian private and home schools, and a second edition suitable for public and secular private schools. The need just became more obvious than ever. The educational bureaucracies that dominate our public schools are in advanced stages of developing the “Next Generation Science Standards” (NGSS), which, though not legally mandated, will be awfully hard for states to buck. The standards explicitly endorse a naturalistic worldview. NGSS’s flagship product, A Framework for K–12 Science Education, published by the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science, states it not as one worldview option among many but as simple fact that (not God but) “Evolution … explains both the similarities of genetic material across all species and the multitude of species existing in diverse conditions on Earth.”

But despite the standards’ insisting that humans are simply part of nature, their general perspective sets people off against the rest of nature. A section discussing “Human Impacts on Earth Systems” says, “Human activities now cause land erosion and soil movement … [and] [a]ir and water pollution … with damaging effects on other species and on human health.” (There’s nary a mention of the long-term rise in human life expectancy that started with the Industrial Revolution and continues even now.)

A later section, on biodiversity and humans, asserts, “Human activity is also having adverse impacts on biodiversity through overpopulation, overexploitation, habitat destruction, pollution, introduction of invasive species, and climate change.” The assumption that what people do is bad is clear in a draft of performance expectations, which requires students to “Provide evidence that humans’ uses of natural resources can affect the world around them, and share solutions that reduce human impact”—as if human impact should always be smaller, not greater. The same document says, “Things that people do to live comfortably can affect the world around them. But they can make choices that reduce their impacts on the land, water, air, and other living things ….” The NGSS acknowledge that human action can have some positive effects, but those are mainly by undoing negative effects of past human action. In short, the NGSS reflect the environmentalist assumption that humans can’t improve on the natural state—exactly contrary to the assumption of Genesis 1:28’s revelation of the mission of man: to fill and rule the Earth, not abusively but, reflecting God’s own actions, in a godly way that enhances its fruitfulness, beauty, and safety, to the glory of God and the benefit of our neighbors. By grade 4, students are supposed to understand that fossils show evidence of “common ancestry”—but there’s no mention of the possibility that similarities arise instead from design for similar functions. By grades 5 and 6, building blocks for uniformitarian geology and evolutionary biology become increasingly prominent in the standards. As World magazine environment reporter Daniel James Devine reports, “High school students will be taught that fossil and DNA discoveries support common ancestry, and that one species can evolve into two. Not only will they learn that human activities have increased ‘the frequency and intensity’ of natural hazards like ‘floods, droughts, forest fires, [and] landslides,’ they’ll study the ‘feasibility of geoengineering’ projects to slow global climate change.” While much in the new standards is unobjectionable, the underlying naturalistic worldview and the politically charged positions on Darwinism and climate change show that this will be one more step in capturing the minds of America’s children—including those Christian children who attend public schools. The Cornwall Alliance stands poised to help counter that move through In His Image 2012, including production of Biblically based environmental studies curriculum. Rather than letting our children’s minds be taken captive by the world, we want to help them learn to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Featured Image courtesy of photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net