2023: Climate change fear meets social-emotional learning
The notorious "educational" cartoon Arthur released its last season in 2022, but PBS has continuously posted related web shorts as late as 2026. The new shorts were made by GBH, the Boston PBS member station that formerly produced Arthur, and independent animation company Hero4Hire Creative. GBH releases one additional short each year.
In the 2023 mental health short "It's Okay to Feel Worried," one of the students, Francine, walks to school with sunglasses on. Out of empathy, Arthur asks why, and Francine says she has a headache, so she is wearing sunglasses to reduce eyestrain. Both characters are representative of eight-year-old children.
Now get a load of this. Francine has a headache as she's scared of "what's happening to the planet because of climate change." Seriously? She used to be one of the more assertive characters in the program.
Through sites such as Common Sense Media, parents used to complain about the Arthur show having too much rude behavior for kids to mimic, yet PBS changed this — in ways the parents didn't ask for.
Many see the value of teaching kids to respect the environment, to recycle, and not to pollute bodies of water, including oceans and ponds. However, some shows that teach this also condition kids to be terrified of climate change. The video begins with anxious students talking to each other, and then the teacher, Mr. Ratburn, performs a mellow breathing exercise partly to model coping behaviors for Francine's climate anxiety. This gives the absurd impression that a young child now needs to take deep breaths because of normal temperature changes in a region.
The Arthur program is considered a social-emotional learning resource, as per PBS LearningMedia, and social-emotional learning materials and curricula are sometimes not as educational as they are promoted to be. "It's Okay to Feel Worried," and more PBS media have the right presentation and methodology to be used in a mainstream social-emotional learning classroom. When taken out of the climate fear context, the breathing exercise is relaxing, but it muddles the message when climate hysteria is involved.
2026: Okay, NPR Climate Desk, you're fired
Some National Public Radio staff members spanning a range of departments, for example, Audio Training and Climate Desk, were bought out until July 17 or laid off on May 27, possibly because of federal funding cuts. What's more, the NPR climate desk was merged into the national news desk.
National Public Radio is closely related to PBS and has an "educational resource" image. The climate desk had specialized reporters writing climate change fear-based stories whose substance was the radio play equivalent of "It's Okay to Feel Worried." As of June 2026, the climate desk system, containing 10 total employees, was laid off, taking Chief Climate Editor Neela Banerjee with it. 50 member stations were involved in climate desk reports.
2026: "Christian Privilege"!?!?!
Project Humanities' new "Christian privilege checklists" may not consider that without principles shared by Christians, students would not be able to attend college. Generous parents help students with FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) and Federal Work Study applications and are notified of FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) requests. Self-discipline helps students earn money to pay for school.
The "Christian privilege checklist" also makes light of parents who are Christian and work to ensure their students get into college; it bashes even Christian students who work jobs through their college days. Arizona State University and Project Humanities collaborated on this campaign.
Forever pertinent: Lots of excuses
One relevant essay to college excuses is “The Dog Ate My Tablet and Other Tales of Woe” by assistant English professor Carolyn Foster Segal.
Originally published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, a periodical geared to college teachers, as "The Dog Ate My Disk" in April 2000, it is a humorous tale of her students’ spurious statements about why their homework was turned in late. The sassy essay has also floated around the internet as "The Dog Ate My Flash Drive." It was renamed to "The Dog Ate My Tablet," with references to "disk" being changed to "tablet" and "newsgroup" being replaced with "listserv," but the original scenarios and message were still included.
The most popular student excuses, such as “There was an emergency at home, and I had to help my family," “I swear I attached it," and “The computer wouldn’t let me save my work,” are neatly divided into categories such as “The Family," "The Evils of Technology," and "The Evils of Dorm Life." Even funnier is the author’s wry, subtly satirical commentary on student excuses.
In “The Family,” she sarcastically asks, “What heartless student would lie, wishing death on a revered family member, just to avoid a deadline?” and then adds, “Creative students may win extra extensions (and days off) with a little careful planning and fuller plot development, as in the sequence of ‘My grandfather/grandmother is sick," "Now my grandfather/grandmother is in the hospital," and finally, ‘We could all see it coming — my grandfather/grandmother is dead.” The students wanted to game the "death in the family is considered an absence that doesn't affect course grade" system seen on any syllabus.
In “The Evils of Technology,” she jots down “electronically enhanced explanations” such as “The printer wouldn’t print," “The printer wouldn’t give me time to proofread," and “The printer made a black line run through all my words, and I know you can’t read this, but do you still want it, or wait, here, take my tablet. File name? I don’t know what you mean" deliberately listed in order of least to most ridiculous.
Other memorable essays, such as "Can't or Won't: The Culture of Helplessness," "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books," and "My Students Can't Read," represent a progression of weird education from 2017 to the present and are either new Chronicle releases or available on similar websites marketed to higher education professors. This may be linked to a lack of consequences or active ownership of following the syllabus and assignment instructions from the student's perspective.
Editor's Note: President Trump is fighting to ensure America's students of all ages get the education they deserve.
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