Environmental Mis-education

"Reading this really makes me angry." Those were the words of a mother of three as she was proofreading the soon-to-be-released Textbook Trash: The Polluting of Environmental Education. Written by Michael Sanera, director of the Environmental Education Research Institute at the Center for the New West - where I also hang my hat - the new study examines the content of environmental topics in textbooks used to teach science, geography and health in grades 6-12. Mothers and fathers everywhere should be angry. So should teachers.

Kids should feel cheated. Reason: The political agendas of the few have infected the textbooks of the many - textbooks picked by government textbook selection groups and used to educate our kids about environmental science and environmental issues.

Findings from Sanera's studies of the content of environmental education in America are disturbing. Example: Twenty-two of the 24 texts that discuss the population explosion state that the world's population is growing faster than the earth's ability to grow food, an assertion most experts would dispute. At the same time, 21 of these 24 texts fail to mention that the world's population growth rate peaked in the late 1960s and has been declining since.

The new report goes beyond the numbers to give graphic side-by-side comparisons: what the textbooks actually say vs. the facts. The result is frightful. Example: A widely used textbook called Concepts and Challenges in Earth Science, published by Globe Fearon, a division of Simon and Schuster, tells students that "climate has changed many times during the earth's history." (True). The text goes on to say that things are different today because human activity - for example, air pollution - can cause climate change such as global warming. (Maybe; maybe not. That issue is very much in dispute with thoughtful, science-based arguments on both sides.)

The text then reels and totters into an ominous never-never land: "A temperature increase might also cause the polar icecaps to melt. This would cause a rise in sea level. In fact, if the icecaps of Antarctica and the Arctic melted, the sea level would rise 61 km. New York City would be almost covered with water. Only the tops of very tall buildings would be above water."

As Sanera points out, "The claim that global warming will cause sea levels to rise 61 kilometers is just wrong. A sea level rise of 61 kilometers (over 37 miles) would mean that not only New York City would be covered with water, but so would Mount Everest, surpassing both the biblical flood and the apocalyptic vision portrayed in Kevin Costner's film, Waterworld."

Sanera also points out that even if you assume that "km" is a typographical error - that the textbook authors and editors really meant "meters" and not "kilometers" - this statement is still off the charts. "Even scientists who are predicting the most severe global warming state that sea levels might rise 6 to 40 inches (one meter is 39.37 inches). So 61 meters exaggerates even the most severe estimates of rising sea levels by 61 times, and 61 kilometers exaggerates scientific estimates by 61,000 times!" This gross exaggeration found in the 1991 edition of the book, which is still being used, is repeated in the 1998 edition.

Another textbook, Health: A Guide to Wellness (New York: Glencoe, 1996), concludes a very unbalanced discussion of the earth's ozone layer and its "destruction" with questions. Included is the following: "What steps can you take to become active in environmental issues? How will doing so affect your self-esteem?"

What we have here are vivid examples of the mis-education of our children, an inevitable result when political agendas are substituted for sound science and economics in the environmental education of our children. It needs to be stopped.