Who's Teaching Our Children? How corporate polluters provide most of the "environmental" education in America's schools by John Borowski Florida's Orange County Convention Center is big. Big enough to hold the Sears Tower, if you laid it on its side. So big you could walk 10 miles and never leave the cement behemoth. The electric bill is $325,000 per month. This decadent structure in Orlando seemed appropriate for the biggest corporate carnival-like setting of the National Science Teachers Convention, the largest gathering of educators in the nation. More than 14,000 science teachers and hundreds of exhibitors passed out armloads of pamphlets, packets, books, stickers, posters and other goodies for teachers. Though there were a handful of conservation groups at the event, those of us sitting at the Native Forest Council booth were clearly in the minority. When I started teaching 20 years ago, I could never have imagined such a perverse display: Industries and their front groups trying to justify everything from deforestation to extinction of species. Worse yet, they were targeting America's teachers and, ultimately, our children. Corporate America has sunk its claws into the last vestiges of (relatively) commercial free space left in our society: public schools. One of the pillars of our democracy, public education, is now for sale. The Greening Earth Society passed out videos and "teachers' guides to the fallacies of global warming," mocking environmental concerns. Weyerhaeuser boasted of the recovery of Mt. St. Helens, as if this geologic event somehow justified clearcutting. The Temperate Forest Foundation offered "The Dynamic Forest Video." In this shrill presentation, insects and fire hurt forests, but industry provides the needed remedies to revive the ill forests of the nation-with the help of chainsaws. The American Farm Bureau, avowed enemies of environmental education, propositioned teachers to reconsider the dangers of biocides. They were selling lies, and teachers were buying-quickly filling their bags with curricula as corrosive as the pesticides that the Farm Bureau promotes. Where were the largest environmental groups to counter this frontal assault on eco- education? Where was the outcry of the educational community? Their deafening silence was tantamount to complicit resignation. Most people consider our public schools to be hallowed ground, where young Americans of various religions, races and social strata collectively learn the tools of citizenship. Yet multinationals now view our children's schools as breeding grounds for propaganda, marketplaces for debunking environmental concerns and the tip of an unimaginably profitable marketing iceberg. The stakes are incredibly high. Although environmental education is becoming increasingly popular (at least 31 states now require environmental studies as a mandatory part of their curriculum), the corporate influence on curriculum is growing. For example, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), just one of many industry-front groups working to promote corporate interests in education, has more than 220,000 members. Its current $6 million campaign, "Building a Presence for Science," is sponsored by ExxonMobil, and will soon be implemented in 23 states and the District of Columbia, reaching more than 36 million students in 73,000 schools. The program invites the very industries that pollute our planet to help teachers develop curricula. The NSTA is currently complementing this campaign by introducing three bills in Congress that will create a "working group" to establish these national curriculum standards. Of the 16 people who will be appointed to this working group, seven will be directly tied to private industry, whereas no direct representation of environmental concerns will be included. page 1 of 3   more