'Activism as Education' has Replaced Learning

As the OECD prepares its 2025 PISA assessment, a new 'critical' component of science evaluation has been added to facilitate the brainwashing of students and render them all activists

As readers know, one of the long-term features of these pages is the attempt to chronicle what ‘the Science™’ is doing right now and highlight very likely outcomes in the near future.

For a particularly egregious example, meet Anna Smajdor, prof. of philosophy at the U of Oslo, who advocates for what she calls ‘Whole body gestational donation’—and what sane people would call ‘zombie pregnancies’ (it’s about using braindead women as ‘incubators’):

Woke Transhumanism Ushers in Age of Frankenstein Science™ by Advocating 'Zombie Pregnancies'

Today, I have a comparable ‘gem’ for you, dear readers, and for that reason, I’d like you to meet Carlie D. Trott, associate professor of psychology at the U of Cincinnati, Ohio (faculty bio, from which the following was taken):

My climate justice research aims to bring visibility to, and work against the inequitable impacts of climate change, socially and geographically [‘equity’ = socialism, and what is meant here is a) impacts are happening, b) they are unevenly distributed (note the conflicts here), and c) she means fighting for a collectivist response]. Specifically, my research is driven by the questions, “What psychosocial and structural factors facilitate or impede processes of transformative social change?” and “How can research contribute to enabling transformative social change?” [in other words: I do activism, dress it up as ‘research™’, and run with my collectivist fever dreams] My work draws upon theories within and beyond social psychology (e.g., social movement theories [i.e., a group-ish, or class-based, approach]; socio-ecological systems frameworks [‘systems’ always relates to ‘holistic’ and otherwise collectivist approaches, here the combination of ‘social’ aspects and ‘ecology’ means nothing short but ‘no-one is safe/fine unless everyone is’]), employs community-engaged, participatory, and action [read: agitation and propaganda] research methods, and aims to center the voices and experiences of those most affected by climate disruption and environmental injustice [this means prof. Trott wants to move these voices to the centre where, of course, the evil ‘white, bourgeois capitalists’ reside (ain’t nuff space for all of us, I suppose) and replace them with ‘those most affected’ (the literal term for this in practice is ‘climate refugees’).

I think you’ve learned enough about prof. Trott; I do think that her publication record is worth a moment of your time as her ‘more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles’ all appeared between 2018-24 (there is one study from 2016), which makes that an average of 5 such pieces per year (which would be impressive if there was something more to it than, say, essentially the same BS bingo), incl.

• ‘Rewriting the climate story with young climate justice activists’, Geographical Research (2024), https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-5871.12662

• ‘What difference does it make? Exploring the transformative potential of everyday climate crisis activism by children and youth’, Children’s Geographies, https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2020.1870663

• Trott, C. D., Even, T. L., & Frame, S., ‘Merging the arts and sciences for collaborative sustainability action: A methodological framework’, Sustainability Science (2020), https://doi.org:10.1007/s11625-020-00798-7

I’m not asking you to read these, but to highlight that there is much, much ‘more’ where the below content came from.

‘Activism as Education’

In one of her more recent articles, prof. Trott actually moves on from the pretence of being an academic and goes fully activist.

Her 2024 paper, ‘Activism as education in and through the youth climate justice movement’, which appeared in the British Educational Research Journal a few months ago, no longer focuses on anything one could, however charitably so, characterise as something worth pondering in terms of academia.

Here is the abstract (and note all emphases and [snark] are mine):

Young people worldwide are increasingly participating in a global movement for climate justice, yet to date, little research has examined how youth climate justice activists conceive of and experience activism as education. The present study used in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 16 US climate justice activists (aged 15–17) to address the research question: How do youth climate justice activists explain and experience the educative power of their activism? The results of reflective thematic analysis bring to light youths' dual roles as ‘learners of the movement’ and ‘climate justice educators’ [briefly: whenever you read ‘reflection’ or a variation thereof, think of the Hegelian dialectic (his method was ‘speculative’—as in: a reflection in the mirror—‘reasoning’) and, in short, communism]. As learners, youth described gaining awareness of climate justice directly from the movement, as well as learning a variety of skills (e.g., organising, communication, conflict resolution) through their activist engagement [I’m looking forward (not) to having these young people work with their hands]. Simultaneously, youth described their role as educators [no training or education needed] through a range of activities intended to raise awareness among adult and youth audiences [that would be ‘conscientisation’ in the terms of ‘critical education theorists’ Paolo Freire and Henry Giroux], including educational workshops and trainings, school visits, teach-ins, curriculum development, talk shows and interviews, creating digital resources, social media outreach and public protest (e.g., strikes, marches and demonstrations). Beyond spreading knowledge of climate in/justice, youth activists were also educators of action and social change processes [so it’s a triple process, then?]—noting that learning about governmental institutions and political processes enabled them to exercise their democratic citizenship and equip and embolden other young people to do the same (e.g., via political advocacy trainings [brainwashing sessions]). The findings of the present study have implications for creating climate justice curricula that not only attend to the scientific and technological dimensions of the climate crisis, but also enable learners’ justice-driven action and democratic participation [by which is meant the supersession of the former by the latter, i.e., have activists taking over the levers of power, incl. especially in the STEM fields].

Are you intrigued? Before we venture on, yes, this is all bullcrap (apologies to cattle), and a long time, I merely made fun of these people spouting that kind of nonsense.

I no longer take this kind of absurdities lightly (esp. since my children attend public school: no private alternative here) as people like prof. Trott and her ilk brainwash the kids via teacher education training.

Of course, this is all hogwash (apologies to pigs), and you can spot this easily even if you don’t catch all their word-games: prof. Trott cites Saint Gretha of the Climate Church at the top of her piece, which tells you all you need to know about the ‘study’.

Oh, lest I forget, if the piece’s premise holds—that education is activism—why send your kids to school in the first place? (Perhaps we should all consider not sending children to these brainwashing centres in order to make people like prof. Trott lose her comfy position at the U of Cincinnati…)

Here is the premise of her article, and beyond that, I shall highlight a few choice segments from the interviews with youth activists:

In the era of school strikes, the potential knowledge gains of a school day are set against the potential existential loss of a safe and secure climate for young people and future generations [this is what Karl Popper called an non-falsifiable hypothesis, i.e., you cannot prove something is right or wrong; put differently, it’s a cult believe, or dogma, not science (but it’s ‘the science™’]. Youths’ meagre loss of a day of education, the argument goes, is worth gaining an ecologically hospitable world. The rhetoric of such trade-offs, however, denies the educative power of youth activism…

Youth activism has been defined as ‘the organized efforts of groups of young people to address the root [the high-brow word for root is, of course, ‘radical’] causes of problems in their local, national, and global communities … [through modes that include] in person or virtual, grassroots or joining an established organization or cause, one-time participation or long-term commitment’

And thus we ‘learn’ that activism = education, albeit to address whatever ‘root causes’ of anything and everything, which need ‘radical’ changing.

Although climate justice lacks a single, widely accepted definition, it is a framework that seeks to recognise and rectify the reality that marginalised and vulnerable groups are disproportionately burdened both by the impacts of, and (policy) responses to, climate change.

Interestingly, prof. Trott gives away the game of what she does in the following sentence (which is important enough that it bears re-reading a few times):

Climate justice thus ‘envisions not only a world in which climate change no longer exacerbates social inequity, but one in which societal responses to its impacts themselves offer an opportunity to build a more equitable and sustainable world’ (Mikulewicz et al., 2023, p. 1277).

See, by hitching a ride on the ‘climate catastrophe™’ band wagon, radical activists seek to (ab)use ‘societal responses…to build a more equitable…world’.

What prof. Trott is telling everyone who cares to read this is this: climate activists take our present society as point of departure (Kant would call this a ‘thesis’), seek to capture climate adaptation policy planks and mould it to their desires (‘antithesis’) to ‘build a more equitable [read: socialist]…world’ (‘synthesis’; note that Hegel would use the concepts ‘abstract’, ‘negative’, and ‘concrete’, but the outcome is the same: the progression of the dialectic).

So, join me on my conspiracy theory™ trip down this particular rabbit hole to learn from the activists’ themselves how they see the world *shudder*.

Excerpts from Trott (2024), ‘Activism as Education’

The present study consists of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 16 youth, aged between 15 and 17, who self-identified as climate justice activists. When asked to report on how they participate in activism (i.e., ‘In your activism for climate justice, what types of actions have you participated in?’), young activists engaged in 4–11 (M = 7.3) forms of activism, the most common being protests, marches, demonstrations and engaging with public officials…

The majority of participants in this study were attending high school, with proportions distributed as follows: 6.25% in 9th grade (age 15); 25% in 10th grade (ages 15–16); 31.25% in 11th grade (ages 16–17); and 25% in 12th grade (age 17), while 12.5% had recently completed high school (age 17). Youth interviewed for this study identified mostly as women (87.5%) with diverse racial backgrounds, including multiracial (37.5%), White (31.25%), Black (12.5%) and individuals of South or East Asian descent (12.5%).

To be fair, Trott mentions that her interview partners were ‘not representative’ in terms of sex distribution or ‘racial’ (in the weird US way) composition, with additional red flags (no pun intended) as follows:

This study’s participants consist largely of groups (i.e., women; Black, Indigenous and People of Colour [BIPOC]) documented to be more active on and concerned about climate [preaching to the choir, so to speak]…

Half of this study’s participants resided in the Northeastern United States, with concentrations in areas such as Greater Boston, New York City and Upstate New York, followed by 37.5% residing on the West Coast, encompassing the Pacific Northwest and Bay area, and a smaller proportion resided in the US Midwest (6.25%) and Southeast (6.25%). As such, this study's participants were over-representative of those living in the US Northeast and West, where respectively 17% and 23.6% of US residents live, and under-representative of those living in the US Midwest and South, where respectively 20.6% and 38.9% of US residents reside…

So, this looks like an academic paper, but it isn’t one. It’s totally lopsided in its design and this should have raised any number of flags during peer-review (but it apparently hasn’t), incl. this hilariously hare-brained admission:

The higher proportion of participants in the US Northeast and West maps onto locations documented to have greater concentrations of protest activity in the youth climate movement.

In other words: prof. Trott did what the proverbial drunk did looking for his car keys under the lamppost.

I’ll spare you the Marisante ghibberish in the ‘methods’ section (which you can easily spot once you know their key terms), but I do wish to highlight one core feature here: according to ‘critical’ (i.e., Cultural Marxist) pedagogy, great importance is paid to so-called ‘generative themes’, i.e., the teacher/writer uses a vehicle to introduce his or her activism into subjects previously unaffected, such as prices for things in mathematics are used to have a discussion about inequality or the like.

I noted any explicit or tangential mentions made by interviewees regarding the educative dimensions of their activism and labelled initial concepts, sometimes using young people’s own language through in-vivo coding or providing interpretations of their intended meanings. Examples of codes included ‘Goal of activism is education’, ‘Learning through activism’ and ‘Teaching and learning through small-scale conversations/info-sharing’…

This iterative process led to the refinement and consolidation of initial codes into a more concise and coherent set of overarching themes…

I recorded concise memos for each participant summarising distinctive or noteworthy aspects of the interviews. In the final phase of coding, I arrived at a final set of themes, each encapsulating a core concept, that collectively encompass young activists' perspectives and experiences related to their activism as an educative force.

And here you can see the fraudulent nature of this piece: prof. Trott ex-post composed a ‘theme’ (very Freirian) for each interviewee that he or she may not have mentioned explicitly and aggregated her findings. She noted that the interviewees spoke in ‘code’, which prof. Trott then re-orders and presents in her article. How that kind of crap passes peer-review is beyond me, but then again, knowing a bunch of ‘pedagogy scholars’, I’m not surprised at-all.¹

Onwards we march, towards the young peoples’ comments. Sigh.

What Drives Young People to Activism?

Laila (17) explained, news coverage on the youth-led Sunrise movement—specifically, a sit-in by 200 young activists pushing for Green New Deal legislation in the office of Nancy Pelosi, then the newly elected US Speaker of the House—drew her attention and shifted her perspective:

‘Before, I was just seeing people post on Instagram, “use metal straws” and “thrift your clothes” and guilting people to care about the planet and stuff like that. Then, through Sunrise, I got a different outlook about climate justice…We should hold these corporations responsible for what they’re doing. And then I started to learn that it’s all really connected. Climate justice has everything to do with everything else that’s messing up the world.’

Of course claiming that ‘climate justice’ is connected to ‘everything else’ is insane; yes, there are problems, but what’s extra-odd is the ‘we should hold these corporations responsible’ adage—it’s a classic deflection move: Speaker Pelosi could have introduced legislation, better still, put pressure on the executive and the judiciary to enforce the existing laws (e.g., the Sherman Anti-Trust Act).

Yet, the great tragedy isn’t red tape (it’s a massive problem) or the demand for new legislation to fix things—the problem, generally speaking, is the increasingly selective, if not arbitrary, application of existing laws.

Eva (17) recalled: ‘I first started hearing that view of climate change from the Sunrise Movement…a more intersectional approach and emphasis[ing] right off the bat, like environmental justice, it's connected to racial justice and economic justice’…

Ines (17) explained that hearing speakers on racial justice, LGBTQ rights and women's rights ‘really stood out’ due to the movement's ‘focus on who's really being impacted and who we need to uplift … so that we can have a more equitable and just future’.

As Laila (17) and Eve (17) explained, youth activists' efforts helped not only to reframe the issue, but also to imagine systemic solutions:

[After] learning how it’s intersectional with…all sorts of oppression and justice, I knew that I had to get involved with Sunrise in one capacity or another. Because they weren't just talking to me about ‘save the trees’ or ‘sea turtles are dying from plastic’ and all that stuff, they were talking about people's lives, people who have dirty water, unclean air and not even houses to live in because of the structure of them. And just how this is all systematic and how the Green New Deal will help us all.

Before I was involved in [activism], I didn’t like thinking about climate too much, but when I did, I thought like, ‘Oh, if people wanna change the world, they should take bike rides.’ Cause that's what science class said. But I think, through the activism, I realised it's very much up to governments and states and legislative change…

It was in her 10th-grade science classroom where Maria (17) first learned about climate justice—a topic that truly hit home:

It wasn't until my sophomore year of high school that, in one of my science classes, someone from … a [youth-led] climate justice organisation in [my] area … did a presentation on what climate justice is and how climate justice isn't just about the environment and they intersect with so many other issues, specifically social justice issues. And that really intrigued me because I was like, ‘Whoa.’ This is literally talking about the things that I see in my community … that no one really talks about. … The [major oil and gas company] refinery is super close to my house. … Growing up, I didn't even know that it was bad for my health or my community, and the toxic relationship that it had with my city.

I’ll stop here as most interviewees repeat themselves etc., and I think you ‘get da vibe’ here.

What I’d like to do next is to identify the absurdity, if not delusion, of these interviewees spouting their activism from the top of their lungs—which has clearly been imparted by a political action committee to which we now turn (note that I consider it possible that prof. Trott had approached the Sunrise Movement for contacts, but I don’t know that).

What is the Sunrise Movement?

First of all, it’s a PAC to support the ‘Green New Deal’ that serves, I think, to obscure the fact that it’s a revolutionary vanguard in the Leninist sense (source):

We are fighting for what science demands – government action that actually meets the scale, scope and urgency of the climate crisis.

We believe that in order to win the world of our dreams, we must build a movement of thousands of young people across race and class to take to the streets and disrupt business as usual until we force the change we need. Together, we will shift public opinion, elect Green New Deal champions, and fight for Green New Deal policies at every level of government.

Only then can we take over our institutions and win the world we deserve.

In their own words, what Sunrise wishes to achieve is this:

For the first time in decades, most Americans now see the U.S. government as a major force in our lives. Especially as a result of the COVID pandemic, most of us realize the government is needed to survive a crisis, for better or worse.

Note the additional clause at the end, ‘for better or worse’.

Note esp. the ‘worse’ aspect here as the Sunrise Movement is intimately connected to ‘the Squad’—that radical group of Democrat congress people like AOC, Ilhan Oman, and Rashida Tlaib.

Moreover, it’s tied to notorious groups, such as the Sierra Club and arch-capitalist Michael K. Dorsey, to say nothing about its ties to equally notorious activists like Gretha Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion, and the like.

All of this is spelled out on Wikipedia, yet apparently the blatantly partisan/radical background is ‘surprisingly’ missing from prof. Trott’s academic paper.

What’s also missing is the crucial fact that, despite its obscure, recent origins, the Sunrise Movement was featured quite prominently in legacy media (call me surprised—not), such as these pieces in NY Magazine, CNN (‘from Bernie to Biden’), and Time Magazine, among others.

The best early coverage I found, though, is from E&E News by Politico, whose intrepid reporters, back in 2018, noted the following:

Inside the Sunrise Movement (it didn’t happen by accident)

The birth of the Sunrise Movement started with a small grant, a lot of Monster Energy drinks and a little help from the Sierra Club. Now it’s the most talked-about environmental group in Washington…

The Sierra Club allowed them to use its Washington office near Union Station as a home base to craft an environmental action plan that was ‘commensurate with the scale of the climate crisis.’

"It wasn’t lost on us that this was incredibly ambitious’, Lichtash said.

The result was a roughly 35-page treatise that relied heavily on carbon taxes — an idea that Weber recently mentioned in connection with his pitch for a "Green New Deal" (Climatewire, Nov. 19).

Oh, you see, the climate crisis™ is so bad, all we need to do is—grant the gov’t the authority to raise taxes. There, problem solved.

This is, by the way, what I consider the ‘climate crisis™’ a scam and grift.

Occupy fizzled. Will Sunrise?

One hurdle for Jaye, Weber and their allies was the difficulty of launching a new advocacy group in an arena where there are plenty of established environmental organizations…

Solving these problems was part of the reason it took nine months of planning before the early Sunrise team launched the group in April 2017.

One factor working in their favor was that the group didn’t start from scratch. Some of the architects of the Sunrise Movement included activists from organizations such as 350.org — which also provided some early financial support…

In the back of Weber’s mind was the challenge of how to avoid the mistakes of the Occupy Wall Street protests — notably their inability to maintain momentum after they captured the public’s attention…

Do read the rest of the piece; Sunrise is a front for a power grab.

Bottom Lines

Here are the conclusions drawn by prof. Trott:

This study adds to the growing literature (e.g., Malafaia, 2022; Mayes, 2023; Vamvalis, 2023) documenting that the transformative possibilities inherent in youth activism and community organising are simultaneously planetary and psycho-educational in scope. Not only are young people learning a great deal about climate, justice and action from their political participation, but in the process they are also positioning themselves in a range of critical educational roles. Young activists, taking seriously the science of climate change and its inequitable and unjust societal implications, are disseminating vital climate justice awareness near and far to activate their peers and exert pressure on power holders…Educational institutions should strive to take seriously the potential benefits of activism—both for young people and our collective planetary futures.

Klaus Schwab and his ilk couldn’t agree more.

It’s hilarious that this kind of crap is pushed because it’s deemed of high quality.

The cognitive dissonance between the language and aims voiced vs. the stark reality—another corporate/activist front group advocating for a ‘global planetary future’ (which is also called ‘collective’)—is mind-bending, that is, if you think about these implications (which, apparently, neither prof. Trott nor these activists do).

This bullcrap (again, apologies to bulls) is already taught in schools across the OECD this year, and I know this for a fact because the OECD’s 2025 PISA study will focus on—‘science’, specifically, ‘climate change™’:

Please read up on this via the OECD’s dedicated website:

Research, evaluate and use scientific information for decision making and action

The past decade has seen an explosion in the amount and flow of information and the ability of individuals to access this information. Unfortunately, as well as a flow of valid and reliable information there has been an increasing flow of misinformation, and worse, disinformation. When it comes to scientific information, both valid and mis-informed, all citizens need the competency to judge the credibility and value of the information that commonly surround any science-related issue.

There is increasing concern about the ease with which people accept beliefs claimed to be ‘scientific’, for which there is no substantive material evidence and for which there is good evidence to the contrary [they don’t mean the modRNA poison/death juices, in case you’re wondering]. A scientifically educated person should understand the importance of developing a sceptical disposition, which seeks to ask if there is a conflict of interest [like with the Sunrise Movement?], whether there is an established scientific consensus and whether the source has relevant expertise [follow the Science™’].

At the core of this competency is an understanding that science is a communal enterprise, and that science is not infallible. While individual scientists or teams may be mistaken, consensus from the community is more trustworthy, as it is the product of extensive peer review within that community representing knowledge that has been checked and re-checked many times [only if the correct™ results are provided though; terms and conditions apply].

Students need to research and evaluate scientific information, claims and arguments in a variety of representations and contexts, and draw appropriate conclusions, demonstrating the ability to:

• Search, evaluate and communicate the relative merits of different sources of information (scientific, social, economic and ethical) that may have significance or merit in arriving at decisions on science-related issues, and whether they support an argument or a solution

• Distinguish among claims based on strong scientific evidence, expert vs. non-expert, and opinion, and provide reasons for the distinction

• Construct an argument to support an appropriate scientific conclusion from a set of data

• Critique standard flaws in science-related arguments e.g. poor assumptions, cause vs. correlation, faulty explanations, generalisations from limited data

• Justify decisions using scientific arguments, either individual or communal, that contribute to solving contemporary issues or sustainable development

This competency requires students to possess both procedural and epistemic knowledge but may also draw, to varying degrees, on their content knowledge of science.

As teachers all over the OECD are now preparing students for the 2025 PISA assessment, the ideas that underwrite these consensus-oriented absurdities are already disseminated.

This will get worse before too long, with no end in sight other than an economic collapse followed by severe, if not draconian, cuts to ‘education™’.

*bangs head on table*

1. Among the more hilariously stupid aspects is the self-flagellation so common among these activist-scholars (sic) who feel like they must express their own ‘positionality’, which prof. Trott does as follows:

I acknowledge my social and generational position as a White, millennial, cis-gendered woman and doctorate-holding, first-generation academic raised and residing in the American Midwest whose perspectives and life experiences have influenced my approach to this research. In particular, my privileged social identities with regard to race, gender identity and professional status, as well as my particular social positioning with regard to age, generation and educational background inevitably shape and constrain how I initially conceptualised this research and how I engaged in data analysis and interpretation.