Environmental education and Censorship
Environmental education in the United States has been a part of the educational landscape since the 1970s, with state governments holding the authority to determine its inclusion and content due to the Tenth Amendment. As of 1995, thirty states had enacted laws mandating environmental instruction, often integrated into various subjects such as science, history, and health. While supporters argue that environmental education promotes awareness and action toward protecting human health and the environment, critics contend that it often employs a pessimistic approach, utilizing guilt and selective data that misrepresents economic principles and leads to misguided conclusions about resource use. Furthermore, some environmentalists believe the curriculum has been influenced by industries like mining and agriculture, which may dilute its effectiveness by prioritizing business perspectives over environmental advocacy.
The varying concerns of students across different socioeconomic backgrounds also complicate the implementation of a standard environmental education. Disadvantaged students may prioritize immediate environmental issues, such as health impacts from local pollutants, over broader topics like climate change. This disparity highlights the need for localized and culturally sensitive approaches to environmental education, rather than a one-size-fits-all model. Overall, the debate over environmental education reflects broader tensions regarding censorship, political influences, and the diverse needs of students across the country.
Environmental education and Censorship
Definition: Education about the relationship between human beings and their natural and artificial surroundings
Significance: Many environmental education programs are accused of fostering censorship
Environmental education has been taught in the United States since 1970. Because the Tenth Amendment, by implication, reserves education to the states, it is up to each state to decide if its students should have environmental education. In 1995 thirty states had laws mandating some type of instruction on environmental issues and concepts.
The proponents of environmental education have claimed that it has helped the nation, states, and localities make tremendous progress in protecting human health and the natural environment. Opponents of environmental education claim that it is dominated by a doomsday approach to environmental issues. Such an approach, opponents argue, uses scare tactics and guilt to induce political actions by the students. Still others claim that environmental education caters to big business and politics, thereby censoring environmentalist ideas.
Environmental Education Laws
Because each state legislature has complete choice regarding environmental education, there are many differences among state programs. Many of the state laws require that environmental education be taught in most subject matter classes and at all grade levels. Students typically learn about environmental issues in a variety of classes, including science, math, history, health, and English. All states that do choose to have environmental education construct their curriculum programs through the state legislature. Florida, Wisconsin, and Arizona have all been cited as being the leading states in teaching environmental education programs. Each state government can also go to the federal government for environmental education funding.
In 1990 the National Environmental Education Act was passed by Congress. This legislation charged the Environmental Protection Agency with the responsibility of coordinating national efforts to increase public understanding of environmental issues, and to advance and support environmental training and education throughout all fifty states. As environmental education has gained in public awareness, critics have claimed that it censors important information, such as the economic principles that, they argue, govern human resource and energy use.
Economics
Some critics of environmental education charge that it censors basic economic principles, such as the price mechanism, consumer behavior, and innovation; and as a result, environmental education misguides more than it teaches. When textbooks of environmental education use selective data to urge students to conserve natural resources, they often attempt to induce guilt among students for not caring for the earth. Rather than learning how economic realities adjust for scarcity and consumer behavior, critics contended that students are only taught that resources are finite and that students should conserve and preserve these resources to save the planet from doom. It is believed that without the teaching of economic principles, students will not learn how competition and the price mechanism stimulate technological innovation and creative solutions to environmental problems. Thus, efforts to save the planet will be inconsistent with larger economic goals that humans pursue, such as long-term economic growth and a rising per capita income. In conclusion, critics argue that by censoring or incompletely explaining economical principles within environmental education programs, textbooks and teachers are seriously miseducating students about energy and natural resource issues.
Cooption by Industry
A completely different criticism of censorship in environmental education comes from environmentalists who believe that environmental education has been diluted by extractive industries such as mining, chemical, ranching, farming, and logging who maintain powerful influences throughout state legislatures. As mentioned earlier, state legislatures have a choice of whether or not they want environmental education and also what it should and should not include. As environmental education has increased in popularity among the states, it is charged that the politicians concerned about representing economics often attempt to change the curriculum to please big business groups. For example, in 1994 the Arizona state legislature erased the state-wide mandate to teach environmental legislation and revised the curriculum language to include more diversity in political and scientific views on the environment and less advocacy. The Arizona legislature also restricted the flow of grant money to schools and transferred many environmental education funds to ranchers, farmers, and miners who were allotted the money so that they could host field trips for students to show how their businesses operate with the environment.
Different Needs and Concerns
Another element of censorship in environmental education is the problem of different needs and concerns among youth across America. Big-city students may worry more about guns and violence than rain forests. Poor rural students may be concerned about their health more in terms of farming pesticides and herbicides than city smog.
In 1995 the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation did a national survey of fourth-through twelfth-grade students on their concerns, education, and action related to the environment. The results illustrate a great disparity of needs and interests between the children of middle class school districts and students from poor school districts. Findings include: Among disadvantaged students, the environment ranks eighth among a list of ten societal issues that students from disadvantaged areas want to make better; students from disadvantaged areas are more concerned about present and immediate environmental problems than students from nondisadvantaged areas, who were more concerned about the future; all students agreed that human health was the number one reason for protecting the environment, but the margin was higher among students in disadvantaged areas; girls are more likely than boys to worry about the environment.
The survey results seem to indicate that because of the differences in needs and concerns between school districts and students, environmental education should not be implemented universally across income levels, cultures, and geographical areas. When programs are implemented without the knowledge of local living realities, it is contended that environmental education overlooks different interests between students and geographical areas and thus censors important information.
As is the case with many other education programs and subjects, environmental education has had to confront the charge of censoring certain topics and ideas. Environmental education has been the subject of criticism from all sides in the debate over environmental issues and politics. Because different parts of the United States are dominated by different political attitudes and needs, the charges of censorship vary considerably.
Bibliography
Merryl Hammond and Rob Collins, One World, One Earth: Educating Children for Social Responsibility (Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society, 1993), develops the thesis that students should be taught how to be political activists and act in an environmentally “responsible” fashion. Steve Jackstadt and Michael Sanera, “Environmental Education: Turning Kids into Political Activists,” The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty (October, 1995), critiques the dominant form of environmental education, which constructs the curriculum in such a way so as to mold students around the environmentalist political agenda. In her essay “Enviro Education: Is It Science, Civics—or Propaganda?” Garbage (April/May, 1993), Patricia Poore claims that much of “enviro-education” is not grounded in sound science or civics, but is muddled with scare tactics to convince children to follow the course of the big environmental groups. The entire Spring, 1995, issue of EPA Journal is devoted to environmental education and how the EPA contributes to such education across the country.