The New American
“Passion governs, and she never governs wisely,” warned Benjamin Franklin in 1775. This apparently has been forgotten — so thoroughly, in fact, that now emotion is sometimes prescribed as a governing factor in the most obviously objective of realms: science.
Just consider the Washington state Department of Health’s climate curriculum, which counsels’ teachers to emphasize “emotions” over “rational thinking.” The appeal is in “Climate Change & Pregnancy,” the second phase of the five part curriculum, which purports to aid students in learning the “intersections of biological, societal, and environmental issues.”
The curriculum reads, “As teachers and students consider the impacts of climate change, we should be mindful of the emotional dimensions of the human experience. For too long, science and science education have prioritized my rational thinking. As we delve more deeply into the impacts of climate change using the data [from the Washington Tracking Network] and the practices of the Next Generation Science Standards, we must learn to pay attention to our own emotions and those of other people.”
