Some years back I showed students Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and a few parents complained that students were being exposed to propaganda and political bias. Although it wasn’t clear whether they were complaining about the message or the messenger, I explained to them that they along with their children were free to examine all evidence and establish their own position on global warming. Basing opinions on facts and evidence should be the very foundation of a liberal education, yet there is an uncomfortable and dangerous resistance to such thinking. Discussing global warming in the classroom is not political; denying it is!

The conversations surrounding global warming and climate change portend a far greater problem that must be addressed academically. When positions are taken without evidence or only evidence that supports one’s position, we have an educational as well as a political emergency. The words of the late senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, come to mind: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

Our present political dysfunction and polarization have made it clear that there is a correlation between the health of our democracy and a quality education where evidence and reasoning are used to support assertions, not ideology or economic self-interest. We are once again a nation at risk.

Larry Hoffner, retired