Under legislation sitting in Congress, teachers may have to sacrifice reading, writing and arithmetic for lessons on global warming.
The No Child Left Inside Act would allocate federal funds to “environmental education and teacher training” for grades K-12.
Critics, including Allen Quist, a political science professor at Bethany Lutheran College, said there's an agenda behind the bill.
“They don’t have to be literate with regards to our Constitution or our Declaration of Independence," he said, "but they have to be environmentally literate. Come on.
“It creates a problem that doesn’t exist, and the Left always does this. They manufacture some crisis knowing that normal people can sometimes be manipulated into doing things.”
Candi Cushman, education analyst at Focus on the Family Action, said parents should be concerned.
“At a time when the dropout rates are at epidemic levels, and we still have way too many kids in our schools who can barely read and write, this type of legislation doesn’t make any sense," she said.
“We can all agree that being outside is good for a kid, but I don’t think that’s what parents want teachers focusing on. They want public schools to return to the basics.”
