Do Corporations Rule the Schools?

By John Borowski, AlterNet. Posted October 22, 2002.

The carnival-like setting of the National Science Teachers Convention is the largest gathering of educators in the nation, drawing more than 14,000 science teachers and hundreds of exhibitors passing out armloads of pamphlets, packets, books, stickers, posters and other educational goodies.

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 dug its claws into one of the last refuges of commercial-free space left in our society, public schools. One of the pillars of our democracy, public education, is now for sale.

-The coal industry's Greening Earth Society passed out videos and teachers guides to the "fallacies" of global warming that mocked environmental concerns;

-Weyerhaeuser boasted of the recovery of Mt. St. Helens, as if this somehow justified clear-cutting;

- The "Temperate Forest Foundation" offered a video titled "The Dynamic Forest." In this shrill presentation, insects and fire hurt forests, but industry provides the needed remedies--with the help of chain saws;

-The American Farm Bureau, avowed enemies of environmental education, propositioned teachers to reconsider the dangers of chemical biocides.

They were selling lies, and the teachers were buying -- 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 environmental education? Where was the outcry of the educational community? Their deafening silence was tantamount to complicit resignation.

Selling Out Our Schools

Most people consider public schools to be hallowed ground, where young people of various religions, races and social strata collectively learn the tools of citizenship. Yet multinational corporations now view our children's schools as convenient locations for the dissemination of propaganda debunking environmental concerns, and as the tip of an unbelievably profitable marketing iceberg.

Education about the environment is being assaulted on two fronts. First, multinational corporations are designing and distributing environmental curricula that are professionally produced, easy to use, often free and extremely biased in favor of industry. Second, some of the most prominent conservative think-tanks in America are mounting a well-funded attack on genuine environmental education.

Their objective is simple: Protect industries that despoil the planet and prevent any emergence of citizen awareness. The spectrum of curricula is breathtaking and its shamelessness is overt. The American Nuclear Society provides "Let's Color and Do Activities With the Atoms Family." Materials I received from Exxon portray the Prince William Sound cleanup as a victory of technology, brushing over the cause of the disaster, the Exxon Valdez.

But the most brazen campaign of miseducation is carried out by the timber industry.

Big timber spends millions on its thinly veiled national PR campaigns, touting them as educational programs (which, of course, they generously donate to public schools). The timber industry offers hikes, presentations and paid workshops for teachers. It distributes books, posters, videos, lesson plans and other materials. Through the looking glass of big timber, old growth forest become decadent biological deserts that require clear-cutting in order to survive. Industry is not destroying the forests, the propaganda explains, it is "managing" them, acting as their stewards -- even saviors.

Project Learning Tree

Often the very organizations that preach the gospel of environmental education are actually industry shills. They have earthy names but clandestine roots. The American Forest Foundation (AFF) has a list of co-sponsors, cooperators and partners that includes some of the most egregious despoilers of our forests: Sierra Pacific, Pacific Lumber, MacMillian Bloedel, Williamette Industries, Boise Cascade.

But the real story is found in one of AFF's core programs, "Project Learning Tree" (PLT).

I first encountered PLT several summers ago when I was asked to lead a tour of teachers through Opal Creek, a wilderness area in the Willamette National Forest. Opal Creek is perhaps the most intact, pristine low-elevation watershed in the Pacific Northwest. Ironically, it has been preserved thanks to the efforts of the very activists that organizations like PLT oppose.

At the time that I agreed to lead the tour, I knew nothing about PLT. I arrived early at our meeting place by the clear waters of the Santiam River. I felt honored by the opportunity to hike with teachers from across the globe and discuss the old-growth forest that I had defended in a presentation before a U.S. Senate committee.

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