LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Michigan Democrat state Rep. Julie Rogers (D-Kalamazoo) has introduced a bill in Michigan for an Environmental Literacy Task Force. The bill, House Bill 4961 introduced in September, creates a 13-member panel for the Task Force and is packed with Democratic Gov. Whitmer appointees and school bureaucrats including the director of the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE); the director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR); a representative of the Michigan Science Teacher’s Association; a representative of the Michigan Association of School Administrators and nine others you can read about here in the summary of the bill.
The bill matches up with the Democrat Party’s Platform which is revised every four years. The current one from 2020 talks about climate change and pursuing “environmental justice” throughout the document. The Democrat Party says, “Climate change is a global emergency. We have no time to waste in taking action to protect Americans’ lives and futures…Like so many crises facing the United States, the impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed in our society or our economy. Communities of color, low-income families, and Indigenous communities have long suffered disproportionate and cumulative harm from air pollution, water pollution, and toxic sites.”
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The platform goes on to say, “Democrats believe there is a better way. We can and must build a thriving, equitable, and globally competitive clean energy economy that puts workers and communities first and leaves no one behind…We applaud the organizing efforts of young people, union workers, and communities of color to mobilize voters and make the climate crisis a top priority.”
How will they do that? The Democrat Party says, “We will use federal resources and authorities across all agencies to deploy proven clean energy solutions; create millions of family-supporting and union jobs; upgrade and make resilient our energy, water, wastewater, and transportation infrastructure; and develop and manufacture next-generation technologies to address the climate crisis right here in the United States. And we will do all this with an eye to equity, access, benefits, and ownership opportunities for frontline communities – because Democrats believe we must embed environmental justice, economic justice, and climate justice at the heart of our policy and governing agenda.”
The national push for climate change policies by the Democrat Party has been met with an equal push from Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Whitmer with her “MI Healthy Climate” Plan and support of EV battery megasites in the state. Millions of taxpayer dollars are being used for Whitmer’s green energy agenda and now it looks like it’s a top down agenda that’s going to be filtered into Michigan’s K-12 schools.
The legislation, if passed and adopted by the schools, would have teachers use an environmental literacy curriculum that was created by the Task Force in order to “prepare students for understanding and addressing environmental challenges of this state the the United States, including the relationship of the environment to national security, energy sources, climate change, health risks, and natural disasters.”
The legislation says that the Task Force is supposed to “seek input from a variety of sources to develop the environmental literacy model curriculum to ensure that the curriculum is based on equally weighted viewpoints in furtherance of critical thinking and analysis regarding environmental literacy,” it will no doubt, rely on the sources that agree with them or the task force wouldn’t be developed.
Topics that are mandated to be in the curriculum include “environmental literacy,” “climate change” and “healthy lifestyle” with the legislation asking the Task Force to “contribute to students’ healthy lifestyles by making outdoor experiences part of the regular school curriculum and creating programs that promote healthy lifestyles through outdoor recreation and proper nutrition.”
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Although there are mandates for the Task Force, Rep. Rogers says there are no mandates for the schools. In an interview with Michigan News Source, Rogers said, “No, it is not a mandate, so its giving local school boards the flexibility to decide what would work best for their school system. That would just literally be creating a task force made up of educators and environmental experts to figure out an environmental literacy framework, and then it would be a menu of options that educators could choose from.”
In the bill’s summary, it says that the legislation would make the Task Force/Commission temporary for up to two years and states that it doesn’t have to be placed within a specific department even though the Michigan Dept. of Education (MDE) would be required to provide staffing and support. Within 60 days after the bill takes effect, the state superintendent would call the task force’s first meeting where a chairperson and other officers are selected. To perform its duties, the Task Force would require assistance from the MDE (Michigan Department of Education), EGLE, DNR, and MDARD (Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development) with advice and information.
The Task Force would also be required to do things like “Create opportunities for enhanced and ongoing professional development of teachers that improves their knowledge of environmental issues and teaching skills related to those issues in settings inside and outside of the classroom” as well as “Recommend improvements to existing environmental curricula, including the Michigan environmental education curriculum support, Michigan environmental literacy plan, and next generation science standards.” In addition, “The Environmental Literacy Task Force would have to assess the extent to which the existing curricula are implemented in this state, address environmental literacy, and meet literacy goals.”
The Task Force is also required to add into the curriculum to “Teach students about twenty-first century jobs, growing industries, and ways to protect and improve the environment by including in the model curriculum instruction on alternative energy, renewable fuels, material science, energy-saving technology, low-impact development, and buildings certified in leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) or buildings meeting a substantially similar standard.”
This same legislation was introduced by Rogers last year but never got to a committee hearing. Rogers says that the bill got a committee hearing last week in the Education Committee and she is really excited that it’s moving forward.
When asked what her goal is for the legislation, Rogers said, “So my goal is to create some environmental literacy framework for K-12 schools so that educators can kind of pull from material and weave it into existing curriculum in classes. So my intent is not to create a separate class, an environmental literacy, but rather to kind of weave in the content to existing classes. I think that there’s a number of different opportunities for where you could include some of this content.”
She pointed to a science curriculum as well as environmental studies, social studies, world studies or even math to use the teachings in and said that it could be taught “throughout the spectrum of K-12” in different age-appropriate settings depending on the grade of the student.
When asked about what the metrics for success are and how she’ll know that intended goals are met, Rogers said, “Because I’m not an educator myself, I wanted to leave that up to the Task Force to decide. So I think there’s some flexibility and figuring out what those metrics look like.”
Rogers also said that she has been contacted by students who are excited about the Task Force legislation. She said, “We had a high school student testify alongside me from Kalamazoo county and since introducing the legislation and having the committee hearing, we’ve had, a number of youth reach out stating that they think it’s a good idea. So I’ve had quite a bit of support from young adults that are hoping that this passes.”
When the students finish the Environmental Literacy learning and graduate from high school, they can go right into President Biden’s American Climate Corps or Gov. Whitmer’s MI Healthy Climate Corps in order to continue to tackle climate change in the state and around the country.
