Honest Education Campaign WHAT IS THE CAMPAIGN? The Honest Education Campaign is project of the Native Forest Council. The Native Forest Council, well known for its passion to protect our nation's public lands, has emerged as a leader in the quest to expose these PR campaigns in our schools. Our environmental education coordinator, John F. Borowski, has created a national stir about the need to confront this issue. His writing has appeared in the NewYork Times, Oregonian, UTNE Reader and other national publications. John broke the story of John Stossel's attempt to manipulate data while attacking environmental education on a June 29th program, Tampering with Nature Disney/ABC program. He also got nationwide attention with his appearance on Making Contact, a national radio project, and his insightful discussion on the program, Consuming Classrooms: Private Interests and Private Education. Recently, VegSource.com ran 3 of John's articles on their website. His article, Commercialism in a Can, shows how soda pop companies score exclusive contracts for their products in our schools. Over consumption of pop has been linked to type 2-diabetes. The Honest Education Campaign officially began in March 2002 with outreach to schools across the country. The forum we have chosen to initiate our fight has tremendous potential to create a national surge of excitement, enlightenment and education. The National Science Teachers Convention (NSTA) will take place in San Diego, California, during March 27-30th. This is the 50th anniversary of the NSTA, and it promises a turnout of over 25,000 teachers! But this prestigious gathering of educators will also showcase the largest venue of corporate interests ranging from Monsanto and the American Farm Bureau to the American Forest Foundation and Greening Earth Society. They will be downplaying everything from species extinction and global warming to clearcutting and the abuse of our national lands. This is the perfect scenario to announce the Honest Education Campaign and its mission, both short and long term. Please let me outline our plan of attack. March 27-30th 2002: The Native Forest Council will secure two booth spaces at the NSTA convention in San Diego. The Honest Education Campaign will look to distribute the following materials for teachers and their students: Hundreds of copies of the Forest Voice, including primers on the attack on environmental education and the ecological values of safeguarding our nations 750 million plus acres of public lands. Distribute the video, The Faceless Ones, a brilliant short analysis of the world's global environmental problems and asks the question, who are the ones responsible for these shortsighted policies that jeopardize the livability of the planet? The Native Forest Council has been given copyright to the film and we will look to distribute between 4,000 and 6,000 copies. A teacher's guide for both K-5 and 6-12 grade will be given out. The guide will outline major global environmental threats, provide suggested readings and solutions to these problems. Offer the Native Forest Council's FREE E-FAX service. This wonderful service, e-faxes to teachers, weekly articles from a wide range of magazines, newspapers and journals covering a plethora of science topics. The teachers can download the articles that they believe are most pertinent to their teaching at the current time or in future lessons. EACH WEEK a featured article, will be accompanied with a lesson plan for both elementary and high school age students. This lesson plan to examine the issue of the article, pose questions, suggest readings and enable the educator to take a very current topic and make it relevant and exciting. Provide a copy of the report titled, Captive Kids , by the trusted researchers at Consumer's Reports. This detailed study, highlights the transparency of these corporate sponsored educational materials. FUNDING NEEDS Pending funding, the campaign would like to distribute two very special videos, one targeted for the younger students and the other for older students. For K-5th students, we would like to distribute copies of the Lorax , Dr. Seuss s timeless treasure on protecting our environment and especially our forests. An accompanying guide would provide a primer on forests, their structure and value. The primer would also provide fun activities and labs, for a hands-on approach. For the older students, we would like to provide David Suzuki s masterpiece on sustainability and globilization, Trading Futures . This wonderful film, with guest appearances by Suzuki, David Korten, Lester Brown, and other respected ecologists and economists, highlights the folly of treating the earth as if it were a business in liquidation. John Borowski uses it in his classroom, and recommends it as one of the most influential videos he has utilized in 21 years of teaching environmental education. An accompanying teachers guide would provide critical thinking about globilization and looking at building a sustainable society. We want to distribute a 12-15 page, primer (in the style of the Forest Voice, on the Native Forest Council website) on the worst offenders in this campaign to brainwash our children. (See info@forestcouncil.org) From Weyerhaeuser to the Greening Earth Society to Monsanto, we will expose the tricks and lies that these entities are using to confuse and mislead our children in our schools. And finally, we would build a data base of teachers who would help fight the flood of corporate sponsored materials in classrooms. Our E-FAX service would highlight federal legislation and other actions to rid schools of these PR gimmicks. It is crucial to highlight this issue to the school board associations of the nation as well. YOU CAN HELP Please consider helping our battle against the corporate invasion of schools. We kick off this noble effort in March 27, 2002. We are trying to raise $100,000 in seed money for this effort. Every penny will go to teacher's materials, videos and services to battle the flood of corporate materials in schools. Please donate whatever your heart and soul can muster. Please send donations to: John Borowski/Honest Ed. Campaign,PO Box 483 Philomath, Oregon, 97370. Please make out the checks to the Native Forest Council or NFC/Honest Ed. Thanks from the bottom of my heart, and the kids thank you also. Blessing and be well. (please feel free to contact me at 541-929-5224 or jenjill@proaxis.com) .