Not Just Politics

Some people may be in denial about the fact, but I don't think it's any big secret that big business does everything it can to buy politicians so that laws and policies go their way. But did you know they're also doing everything they can to buy teachers? According to this article, the company that made An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's documentary about global warming, decided to give 50,000 DVDs of the film to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for educators to use in their classrooms. But the NSTA turned the gift down because they were too worried about upsetting Exxon Mobil and the other big corporations that give them lots of money. They like the free textbooks and lesson plans they get, even if the science in them is rather shoddy. Excerpts from the article:

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. . . .

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.

NSTA's list of corporate donors also includes Shell Oil and the American Petroleum Institute (API), which funds NSTA's Web site on the science of energy. There, students can find a section called "Running on Oil" and read a page that touts the industry's environmental track record -- citing improvements mostly attributable to laws that the companies fought tooth and nail, by the way -- but makes only vague references to spills or pollution. NSTA has distributed a video produced by API called "You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel," a shameless pitch for oil dependence. . . .

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." . . .