Who's Raising the Kids? by Susan Linn

Author:Susan Linn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press

I’m proud of our success. Scholastic not only dropped the coal industry materials but also committed to setting more stringent limits on their corporate-sponsored teaching materials. But clearly, more work needs to be done. Today, often in the name of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education, the fossil fuel industry continues to distribute classroom materials on energy sources and the environment. These materials are designed, however, to promote the industry’s vested interests and deny, or understate, the potential harm the fossil fuel industry causes. Students can learn about fracking from Shell Oil Company.37 They can watch an online video produced by BP (British Petroleum)—remember the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? On the one hand, the video is about how humans can have a negative effect on the environment. On the other hand, it offers only nature preserves and animal crossing signs as solutions, omitting mention of conservation, alternative energy sources, or global warming.38

What’s happening to schools in Oklahoma, where oil represents a significant chunk of the economy, is even more worrisome. As of 2017, fourteen thousand teachers were using a kindergarten through twelfth grade science curriculum created by the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board (OERB), which is funded by Oklahoma oil and gas companies.39 Like the BP materials, those produced by the OERB don’t include any downsides of oil extraction and refining. And what’s worse is that instead of being exposed in only one grade to science through the lens of fossil fuel companies, kids taught by those fourteen thousand teachers in Oklahoma may go all through school without ever encountering an honest and fact-based assessment of the risks and benefits of fossil fuel consumption.

One of the more concerning efforts by a fossil fuel conglomerate to create teaching materials that promote their financial interests is that of Koch Industries, headed by billionaire Charles Koch. Koch Industries ranks among the worst corporate polluters in the United States.40 So it’s not surprising that the conglomerate has been linked to efforts to ensure that school science materials deny the facts of climate change, including the human effects on environmental degradation. In 2017, the Koch-funded Heartland Institute sent free copies of their climate-change–denying book Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming to 25,000 science teachers around the United States, with the intent of sending one to every science teacher in the country.41

Koch Industries is also responsible for creating and distributing teaching materials for high school history, civics, government, and current events classes through the Bill of Rights Institute, founded by Charles Koch and funded in part by the Charles Koch Foundation.42 As I reviewed Bill of Rights Institute materials,43 I couldn’t help but notice that they highlight freedom, individual rights, individual virtues, and the benefits of limited government. These are important concepts for children to learn and are fundamental components of American democracy. What I couldn’t find, however, are the equally important counterbalances to these concepts that are also essential to a successful democracy—the benefits of a government whose laws ensure public education, protect the

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