Texas Lets Polluters Teach Enviromenalism to Children
Gail Thaler
Whose Shade of Green?
Critics Find Environmental Bias in Schools
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 22 1997; Page A01
The Washington Post
The problem, as some Texas officials described it, was the
"unbalanced"
view children in public schools were getting about pollution. So two
weeks
ago, the government got a little help from the experts: the biggest
polluters
in the state.
At a seminar for educators, leading oil and chemical corporations were
invited to offer advice on teaching children about the environment.
The
companies helped pay for the seminar, and some promoted classroom
materials they had developed for schools. One brochure, produced by
Exxon, touted the advantages of gasoline power over electric vehicles.
The Houston conference, co-sponsored by the Texas Natural Resources
Conservation Commission, infuriated environmental groups, who say they
weren't invited. But it also focused attention on a question that is
getting
national attention today on the 17th observance of Earth Day: Who
controls the environmental education of the nation's children?
Critics of environmental education say children are being "scared
green"
by textbooks and a mass media that serve up a steady diet of gloomy,
politically slanted messages about the planet's future. "We're
creating
doomsday kids," said Michael Sanera, a prominent critic whose new
book,
"Facts Not Fear: A Parent's Guide to Teaching Children About the
Environment," is being hailed by conservatives. "Children are getting
slogans and dogma instead of being taught to think critically."
But environmentalists say that both the book and the Houston seminar
are
part of a nationwide effort by industries and political conservatives
to
discredit environmental instruction -- while simultaneously promoting
industry-friendly teaching materials and textbooks.
Both sides agree the criticism has begun to have an effect: One state
--
Arizona -- has abolished mandatory environmental study in public
schools,
and several other states are considering revising or killing their
programs.
And some environmentalists fear a federally sponsored environmental
education program could be threatened when it comes up for
reauthorization in Congress later this year.
Environmental education encompasses a wide range of teaching
activities
that includes environmental science classes, as well as coverage of
ecology topics in social studies or science books. About 30 states now
have environmental education programs, though many individual schools
offer little formal instruction, or none at all.
Schools and teachers who choose to teach about the environment may
select from among literally thousands of books and teaching guides,
including materials published by textbook companies, environmental
groups and major corporations. In terms simplified for children -- or
in some
cases jazzed up for the MTV generation -- these guides introduce
students
to exceedingly complex and controversial topics such as global climate
change and wetlands destruction -- subjects that confuse and divide
many
of their parents.
Just as with teachers themselves, the quality of the books varies
greatly.
But Sanera and other critics contend that most of the texts not only
misinform, but mislead.
"Environmental books tell only one side of an often complicated
story," he
says.
In his book, Sanera chips away at what he sees as distortions in
commonly
used textbooks. For instance, while children are often shown images of
smokestacks belching dirty air, they rarely are told that air quality
has
improved dramatically in the United States in the past two decades, he
says.
He faults other books for painting technology and Western industry as
villains. The geography text "Exploring a Changing World," for
example,
notes that China "has a lot to show the developing world about
producing
food. . . . They rely on human labor rather than expensive machines."
"These books ignore the fact that, if the people of the Earth are to
become
healthier and live longer, they will do so through technology, not
ideology," he writes.
Professionals in the field acknowledge that problems exist. Some
textbooks
contain errors, and some teachers have blurred the line between
instruction
and advocacy. But the suggestion that children are being traumatized
or
brainwashed is "just plain wrong" said Kevin J. Coyle, president of
the
National Environmental Education and Training Foundation.
In 1994, Coyle's group commissioned what is believed to be the most
comprehensive survey of schoolchildren's attitudes about the
environment. Of 2,139 students surveyed nationwide, the environment
ranked below AIDS, guns and kidnapping as a source of concern. Less
than half listed the environment as something they worry about.
Other research suggests that environmental awareness actually improves
children's confidence, Coyle says. Children believe environmental
problems can be solved, polls show, and that they can play a role in
the
solution.
"Kids actually develop a more hopeful attitude because there they can
do
things like turning off lights or not wasting water," Coyle said.
Coyle and others believe the backlash against environmental education
is
politically motivated -- a view supported in a new report by
California-based Center for Commercial-Free Public Education.
The report, "Endangered Education," accuses Sanera in particular of
using
provocative anecdotes to manipulate public perceptions. Authors
Marianne Manilov and Tamara Schwartz said the stories themselves are
often distortions of real events.
Consider, for example, the flap over an alleged outburst of activism
at the
Canyon View Elementary School in Tucson. In 1994, second-graders
sounded off to the local newspaper after a developer destroyed a patch
of
desert behind their school to make room for a new subdivision. "The
desert
used to look beautiful, but now they are wrecking it," wrote one
7-year-old.
"People are so greedy about money," wrote another.
Conservative lawmakers cited the letters as evidence of environmental
education gone awry. Sanera, in a newspaper article, has suggested
that
the young writers were echoing "teachers' ideas about biodiversity or
sustainability." The controversy helped spur a rollback of Arizona's
mandatory environmental education program, which was abolished the
same year. Control of funds for environmental education was turned
over
to loggers' and cattlemen's associations.
But Ron Melnick, the teacher whose pupils wrote the letters, says the
critics got it wrong. Melnick said his youngsters reacted viscerally
to the
sight of bulldozers toppling centuries-old saguaro cactuses that they
had
studied during nature walks. The letters, he said, were the children's
idea.
"I bent over backward to show them the developer's side of things,"
Melnick said. "It's ironic that the story is being turned around like
that."
In a recent interview, Sanera stood by his book and its anecdotes and
insisted that he strongly supports environmental education -- though
in a
rigidly scientific format and with no federal involvement.
Some leaders of the environmental education field worry that Sanera's
book
and high-profile media tour could weaken support for the National
Environmental Education Act, which helps fund training programs and
curriculum development. But such staunch conservatives as Sens. Lauch
Faircloth (R-N.C.) and James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) praised the law as a
"safeguard" against inaccuracies in environmental education when they
introduced legislation to reauthorize the act last June.
Leaders of the profession agree.
"The emphasis on accuracy is something we share," said Bora Simmons,
past president of the North American Association for Environmental
Education, a professional group that is working with the Environmental
Protection Agency in developing new national standards for teaching
about ecological issues.
But, parting company with Sanera and other critics, Simmons says
schools
should not only provide students with accurate, balanced information,
but
encourage them to use "good citizenship skills" in drawing their own
conclusions about complex environmental problems. "Environmental
education is not about creating environmental activists," she said.
"What
we are about is creating good citizens."
Defining the line between the two can be tricky, as many educators are
finding out. At Kramer Middle School for Environmental Studies in
Southeast Washington -- the nation's only junior-high magnet school
with
an environmental emphasis -- Principal Nancy Berry has implemented a
strict no-advocacy policy that she hopes will keep controversy at bay.
"Most of our kids have never heard of the Sierra Club -- and they have
no
reason to," she said, referring to the environmental group. Still,
children
tend to draw their own conclusions about the world.
For Kramer's Desdemona Harris, 12, something clicked on the day she
visited the nearby Anacostia River for a science fair project. Armed
with a
bucket and a bacteria detection kit, she collected water samples and
tested
them for the presence of human sewage.
The samples were incubated and coded with colors that would show the
range of contamination, from mildly tainted purple to putrid yellow.
Of six
samples, four were yellow.
"It tells you that most of our water is dirty," Harris said. "I think
we need to
clean it up."
@CAPTION: Lakiva Thomas, a seventh- grader at Washington's Kramer
Middle School for Environmental Studies, waters flowers her class
planted
in front of the school. Kramer is the nation's only junior-high magnet
school with an environmental emphasis.
@CAPTION: Lakiva Thomas, a seventh-grader at Kramer Middle School
for Environmental Studies in Southeast Washington, holds flowers
native
to the area.
© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
Back to the top
Zepp
On Tue, 22 Apr 1997 08:37:04 -0700, Gail Thaler <scri...@best.com>
wrote:
>Whose Shade of Green?
>
> Critics Find Environmental Bias in Schools
>
It's astonishing the lengths industry will go to to try and "protect"
the kids from environmental influences in the hope they will turn into
"good citizens".
Here, where timber is king, the industries routinely set up
"educational" field trips for the kids. The head of the local
chapter of WIT (Women in Timber) sent off a scorching flame to FOX for
carrying a episode of the Simpsons which showed a congressman getting
a bribe from a timber lobbiest to cut national park timber. Disney
routinely gets complaints from various timber groups about how Disney
shows the Amazon forests being cut down without stopping to explain
that of course, in America, there is careful timber management. And
of course, the local honchos are forever trying to convince the locals
that city folks just don't understand that wood comes from trees, but
they hate loggers because loggers and self-reliant and hard-working...
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With each carnal session
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