November 29, 2006

Inconvenient indeed

Posted by Kate Sheppard at 3:33PM

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Think public schools are funded only by public funds? Not quite. Check out Laurie David's article from Sunday's Washington Post, which details the National Science Teachers Association's (NSTA) rejection of 50,000 free copies of An Inconvenient Truth for use in science classes across the country. It's a little insight into other forces at work in education budgets, and therefore classrooms.

Accepting the DVDs would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters," the NSTA wrote.

Those supporters? [Insert feigned surprise here]

ExxonMobil, et al.

Writes David, one of the film's producers, on the influence these capital providers have in the classroom already:

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.

In their rejection, the NSTA claimed concern that other "special interests" might try to sway public schools.

The NSTA shot back this response today via their website, claiming that they only suggested "alternative means of distribution" and that they are now "currently pursuing options to make the DVD available to teachers."

Perhaps the truth is more inconvenient than we thought.