They Let James Q. Wilson Write a High School Textbook?
By Student Matthew LaClair of Kearny, NJ — whose AP Goverment class uses American Goverment — “was particularly upset about the book’s treatment of global warming.”
The book’s authors James Q. Wilson and John DiIulio Jr. claim that “the scientific community is divided over the issue,” and “activist scientists say that the earth is getting warmer; skeptical ones note that the earth’s atmosphere has been getting cooler.” Environmentalists are portrayed as “elites who often base their arguments on ideology as much as facts” and “raise money with scary statements about the harm global warming will cause.”
Here’s the thing; I’m not terribly surprised that Wilson and DiIulio would spend some of their precious time trying to indoctrinate America’s high school students. To attack global warming specifically, however, is not an approach that I would have expected; it has always struck me that the bulk of such efforts are cynical attempts to feed the rubes and the oil companies. I would have doubted that Wilson and DiIulio actually believe that there is a vast conspiracy of scientists and activists dedicated to the project of making Michael Crichton cry. I suppose that either a) I would be wrong, or b) Wilson and DiIulio really are more comfortable with the Mayberry Machiavellianism that the latter would lead us to believe…