A new era of teaching in Australian schools launched last month. Through lesson-provider Cool.org, teachers can now create their own tailored lessons via artificial intelligence engines. This input will produce in ten seconds a teacher’s 4500-word plan of scripts, notes and kids’ worksheets, all neatly keyed to State or federal curricula.

 The bad news is that the AI slop arrives steeped in green-left influence, aimed at turning kids into know-all activists and campaigners for wind turbines and Aboriginal treaties. 

The engines of course drench kids in Julia Gillard-inspired “cross-curriculum priorities” of Sustainability and Aboriginality. The AI also tugs its forelock to the United Nation’s 17 “Sustainable Development Goals”, including climate agitation (SDG13) and Indigenous self-government (SDG16 et al).^[1]

This unsettling AI development has arrived in classrooms through Cool.org, a green-left provider of free on-line lessons.^[2] For example, in 2021 it provided a lesson for teachers to encourage kid ‘protestors’ to sit through the National Anthem. Cool about a month ago began offering teachers access to “CoolPlus” premium content at $A144 a year. 

Cool’s downloadables have been traditionally designed by Cool’s curriculum-savvy subcontractors. Now, teachers themselves can embellish Cool lessons with AI, or generate output wholly from AI after filtering for topic and age group. 

Cool, self-described as a “sophisticated education powerhouse”,(p1) functions in schools as a shadow education system, with minimal accountability to ministers and departments. Teachers’ reliance on Cool for lesson-prep work is unbeknownst to many or probably most parents – especially the 30% or so of parents now in the anti-woke One Nation camp.

Cool inside its green-left bubble seems oblivious to its bias. It says, 

 “Our AI is trained with bias minimized, expert-verified models and high-quality, teacher-tested resources.” 

Since Cool was started by the multi-millionaire Just Jeans’ Kimberley clan in 2008, around 200,000 teachers have done close to 20 million lesson downloads. Currently these scripts reach 2.5m kids per year. Close to 95% of all schools have at least one teacher downloading Cool material. Most of it is harmless or beneficial, but anything political gets the green-left makeover.

Cool’s last annual report for the public was in 2022-23, followed by an “Impact Report” by third-party consultants. Pro-forma financial reports continue annually at the Charities Commission. These show latest revenues of $3.9m — mainly from services and left-wing foundations – and 20 staff. For sure, Cool in schools generates one heck of a bang per buck. 

Chief executive Thea Stinear, from her appointment in 2022, saw her role as imbuing kids with progressive ideas about “climate change” and “anti-racism”.^[3] She began as a secondary science teacher at Brentwood Secondary College from 2007-12. There she “created and ran the sustainability program, focusing on student leadership, green infrastructure and curriculum design.” 

She’s written on LinkedIn, “I’m an education nerd who believes that teachers are the cornerstone of a thriving society and essential for building a brighter future for all young people and the planet.” Another profile says, “She is driven by a simple belief: education is one of the most powerful levers for change, especially when teachers are trusted, supported and empowered to lead it.” These highly-unionised teachers are one of Labor’s most militant cohorts and funders.

For Cliscep, I’ve generated for testing five of Cool’s AI-driven lessons, three on climate alarm and two on Aboriginal activism. In keeping with today’s orthodoxy in schools, the lessons all point kids towards “taking action”, like badgering parents, principals and shire councillors with woke messaging, or gallivanting off on School Strikes 4 Climate – with Cool’s endorsement.

 Kids’ efforts at creating campaigns are graded. The least-impressive campaign is dismissed as “blueprint is unclear, lacks a specific right, or proposes ineffective/unexplained methods. Minimal connection to historical precedents.”

The very best campaigning is showered with praise: 

“Blueprint is exceptionally clear, innovative, and well-justified, with methods/tactics that are highly strategic and persuasively linked to historical precedents and contemporary relevance.”

The “Climate Crisis” lessons – kindergarten-like in their simplicity — involve CO2 as a “pollutant” operating as the control knob on global temperature, like the volume knob on your radio. Cool assures kids they can turn this global thermostat down by deleting meat from the school canteen, using bikes and planting native shrubs. (Nowhere do Cool’s anti-CO2 lessons suggest scrapping the school’s air-con or that teachers should swap their cars for public transport).

The lessons deploy something new. The teacher can withhold an “Exit Ticket” if a kid on his/her AI-created worksheet can’t scrawl properly-conformist responses. I can’t discover what this “Exit Ticket” permits or debars, but to me it seems like either a carrot or cattle prod.

AI will give 11-year-olds a multiple-choice worksheet to test if they have digested all the green-left mantras. Fully correct worksheets earn the “Exit Ticket”.

 For example, AI creates a lesson for Year 9 and 10 science students called, “Weathering the Storm: Understanding and Acting on Climate Change”.^[4] It provides a final five minutes for kids to “Reflect”, and Step 2 reads:

Exit Ticket: “On a slip of paper, write down ONE way human activities are affecting the carbon cycle and ONE specific action that could help reduce greenhouse gases.”

AI’s annexed notes for teachers include “Metacognition & Reflection.” The notes say climate questions to kids 

“foster self-awareness about how they learn and how they engage with complex, real-world issues. These are best used at the end of the lesson, perhaps as an exit ticket or a wrap-up discussion.”

Lessons direct kids to reliable, i.e. alarmist, sources including Tim Flannery’s extreme alarmists at the Climate Council. Kids are to shun non-alarmist material. They are asked, with Exit Ticket in mind, 

“After critically evaluating different sources today, what is one strategy you will use in the future when you encounter information about climate change online or in the news?”

Time now for a detailed look at  a  Cool  AI lessons on climate alarm.

Climate Change: Biomes Under Pressure

Year 9: Geography 7-10, AC9HG9K02 – the effects on environments of human alteration of biomes to produce food, industrial materials and fibres. 

The “quick summary” says kids will learn how humans, by altering the landscape for food, mining and fibres can worsen climate change.

 Students will investigate the interconnectedness of human activities and environmental consequences, culminating in a proposal for sustainable change within their school community.

In the 4500 words, there are only perfunctory mentions of the necessity of agriculture and industry: the spotlight is fixed on environmental impacts and climate alarm.

The “Success Criteria” for kids is that they can parrot about the ‘biome alteration’ and ‘warming’ and “propose a practical school-based action to mitigate it.” 

Cool seems aware that non-stop woke teaching could make kids yawn. Hence it gees them up with super-hero role playing to save the planet, under the header, “Making It Matter”. 

 Imagine you are part of a global task force. Your mission: to present a compelling case to world leaders at the upcoming UN Climate Summit [Move over, Climate Minister Chris Bowen – TT]. For weeks, your team has been analyzing data, witnessing firsthand the dramatic shifts in our planet’s biomes – the vast, life-supporting systems like forests, deserts, and oceans. You’ve seen how industrial agriculture is clearing rainforests at an alarming rate, how overfishing is emptying our oceans, and how intensive mining is scarring landscapes. [Two points omitted: mining enables civilisation, and wind turbines and solar farms tend to scar landscapes, as any farmer will attest].

These actions, designed to produce the food, industrial materials, and fibres we rely on, are fundamentally changing the Earth’s climate. Your presentation must not only outline these profound environmental shifts but also convince leaders that immediate, significant action is not just necessary, but urgent. The world’s natural balance is at risk, and your evidence is critical. You must inspire them to act.

Your goal is to make them feel the profound consequences of inaction and the immense potential of decisive, collective action.

Cool boasts that this rubric immerses kids “in a high-stakes global scenario where their understanding of biome alteration and its climate impacts is crucial for influencing real-world decision-makers…( AC9HG9K02).^[5]

The “Shifting Landscape” script tells the teacher to show kids a series of striking images, like a lush rainforest, terrain turned to desert, and a “heavily industrialised agricultural area”. Talk about stacking the deck!

 Students then express their feelings about each image and choose an example where humans have negatively impacted the landscape (there is no hint so far of any positive change). They must then predict what this sample landscape “might look like in 50 years”, ie in 2076 when they’re queueing for their old age pension. 

Kids volunteer to tell the rest of the class about their 2076 prediction. This doesn’t seem like “education” to me, more like an AI hallucination, but this “lesson” is all too real.

The instructions continue with added negativity about food and mining activity, e.g. “clearing forests for cattle ranching” (meat harms the climate), and “vast monocultures of crops like palm oil” (except palm oil is demanded by alarmists as a non-fossil fuel).

“Industry” is associated with mining and “deforestation for timber”. The point of the exercise involves “Contribution to climate change/Specific Climate Change Effect”.

 Kids form groups to bewail human alterations, including “coral reefs” — with no mention that the Great Barrier Reef’s coral is thriving.

The teacher is to wander among the groups ensuring kids are doing “deeper thinking” about “long-term consequences”, presumably by 2076. 

The teacher has a worked example to keep kids on track, namely “Clearing of boreal forests (biome) in Canada” for timber and paper, with consequent global warming promoting wildfires “further releasing carbon”. (The lesson-writer means carbon dioxide gas, but seems unaware of the difference).

To pump up kids’ role as “School Biome Guardians”, the kids then brainstorm in 50-75 words how to reduce their school’s contribution to global warming – e.g. meat in the school canteen is a bad thing. 

As usual, kids have to share around their brainwaves to get “constructive feedback from peers”.

 Assess student “Action Proposals” for clarity, practicality, and connection to lesson concepts (biome alteration, climate change mitigation, school community action).

The teacher can collect these proposals to potentially present to school administration…

Yes, having wasted the teacher’s time and kids’ time on all this poppycock, they might as well waste the principal’s time too.

 Literacy Extension:

 Students write a short persuasive letter to the school principal or P&C, using evidence from the lesson, advocating for one of the “Take Action” proposals. They should focus on using clear, convincing language and a respectful tone.

The AI avatar regrets that kids, having been taught that life-giving CO2 is “pollution”, often think that other pollution like littering and smog also causes global warming. Buried in the fine print is also recognition that some land-use changes like farming are essential for human survival:

 . “Emphasise that the goal isn’t to stop all human alteration, but to make it more sustainable and less damaging to the climate.”

 Under the heading, “Where to Next?” the kids aka climate vigilantes 

“investigate global efforts and policies aimed at climate change mitigation and adaptation.” Maybe kids need 1000-page IPCC volumes for their bed-time reading.^[6]

Cool is well aware that schoolkids by the thousand are now traumatised by teachings about climate doom. Its purported remedy is double-speak about both the climate “crisis” and how kids can solve it by riding bikes and eating lentils. Cool tells teachers, 

Frame discussions around empowerment and actionable solutions rather than focusing solely on overwhelming challenges. Acknowledge that the topic can be sensitive and provide opportunities for students to express themselves constructively. Emphasise that collective action, even at a local level, can make a meaningful difference.

Cool seems to have faintly recognised that with China, India, US and Russia going all-out for fossil fuels, schoolkids riding bikes won’t actually suppress global CO2 emissions much:

While the lesson does aim to empower students with the “Take Action” activity, without proper framing, students might see it as a token gesture rather than a meaningful contribution. They might struggle to connect the ‘local’ school actions to the ‘global’ problem of climate change caused by biome alteration.

So however tenuously, teachers need to couple the school-level anti-emission drive with good news about lots of small-scale activity that “can have a significant cumulative effect” and “demonstrate what is possible”. Never mind Australia’s ex-Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel’s admission that if Australia in its entirely sank below the waves, there would be virtually no impact on global warming.

According to Cool, touting solutions “avoids overwhelming students with doomsday scenarios and instead pivots their attention to proactive, positive responses, fostering a sense of agency and hope.”

 The teacher wraps up by referring to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, namely Goal 13 – “Climate Action” and Goal 15 – “Life on Land”, reversing land degradation.

If you think schools have become cesspits of leftist indoctrination, join the club. The LNP coalition had years to do something about this trashing of schoolkids’ innocence, and did nothing whatsoever about it and even exacerbated it with fealty to net zero and Paris accords. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

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^[1] The UN 17 SDGs are a farcical compromise to please green lobbies’ urgings totalling 100s of goals. Because there is no prioritisation of the 17 goals, they are ineffective.

^[2] Our resources embed environmental, social and economic sustainability into all subjects and curriculum areas.2021-22 annual report p5

^[3] Annual Report 21-22 p12

^[4] Because of paywalling, links to lesson specifics can’t be provided

^[5] Codes like AC9HG9K02 precisely peg lessons to elements of the official curricula, re-assuring teachers that use of the material will not get them into any trouble with superiors.

^[6] Actually, the lesson’s reference list does include “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (n.d.). IPCC Reports. Search: IPCC official website. (For background information on climate change science and impacts).”