No, I’m not talking about that idiotic Senator Inhofe who thinks global warming is a hoax perpetrated by evil, liberal, atheistic scientists trying to fraudulently obtain grant monies from the government. He’s merely laughable.
No, I’m talking about a development that is much more insidious and disturbing — the Exxoning of America’s Science Teachers (from Laurie David’s op-ed in The Washington Post):
At hundreds of screenings this year of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the first thing many viewers said after the lights came up was that every student in every school in the United States needed to see this movie.
The producers of former vice president Al Gore’s film about global warming, myself included, certainly agreed. So the company that made the documentary decided to offer 50,000 free DVDs to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for educators to use in their classrooms. It seemed like a no-brainer.
The teachers had a different idea: Thanks but no thanks, they said.
(cont.)
In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other “special interests” might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn’t want to offer “political” endorsement of the film; and they saw “little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members” in accepting the free DVDs. […]
Still, maybe the NSTA just being extra cautious. But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place “unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.” One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp. […]
And it has been doing so for longer than you may think. NSTA says it has received $6 million from the company since 1996, mostly for the association’s “Building a Presence for Science” program, an electronic networking initiative intended to “bring standards-based teaching and learning” into schools, according to the NSTA Web site. Exxon Mobil has a representative on the group’s corporate advisory board. And in 2003, NSTA gave the company an award for its commitment to science education. […]
In the past year alone, according to its Web site, Exxon Mobil’s foundation gave $42 million to key organizations that influence the way children learn about science, from kindergarten until they graduate from high school.
And Exxon Mobil isn’t the only one getting in on the action. Through textbooks, classroom posters and teacher seminars, the oil industry, the coal industry and other corporate interests are exploiting shortfalls in education funding by using a small slice of their record profits to buy themselves a classroom soapbox.[…]
Along with propaganda challenging global warming from Exxon Mobil, the curricular offerings included lessons on forestry provided by Weyerhaeuser and International Paper, Borowski says, and the benefits of genetic engineering courtesy of biotech giant Monsanto.
“The materials from the American Petroleum Institute and the other corporate interests are the worst form of a lie: omission,” Borowski says. “The oil and coal guys won’t address global warming, and the timber industry papers over clear-cuts.”
An API memo leaked to the media as long ago as 1998 succinctly explains why the association is angling to infiltrate the classroom: “Informing teachers/students about uncertainties in climate science will begin to erect barriers against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future.”
This is what you get with with the Republicans’ “No Child Left Behind Act” masquerading as education reform. Because the truth is that our schools are underfunded, especially when it comes to subjects like science. And in that situation they will accept funding from corporate interests, interests with their own vested agenda for fudging the truth and disseminating propaganda under the guise of classroom instruction. This is not only a national disgrace it is a national tragedy in the making.
Let me allow Laurie David the last word on the subject:
It’s hard to say whether NSTA is a bad guy here or just a sorry victim of tight education budgets. And we don’t pretend that a two-hour movie [i.e., An Inconvenient Truth] is a substitute for a rigorous science curriculum. Students should expect, and parents should demand, that educators present an honest and unbiased look at the true state of knowledge about the challenges of the day.
As for Exxon Mobil — which just began a fuzzy advertising campaign that trumpets clean energy and low emissions — this story shows that slapping green stripes on a corporate tiger doesn’t change the beast within. The company is still playing the same cynical game it has for years.
While NSTA and Exxon Mobil ponder the moral lesson they’re teaching with all this, there are 50,000 DVDs sitting in a Los Angeles warehouse [i.e., An Inconvenient Truth], waiting to be distributed. In the meantime, Mom and Dad may want to keep a sharp eye on their kids’ science homework.
National Science Teachers Association
