Yes, your kids’ teachers face a myriad of options for whose bitch they want to be this semester, as corporations, PR firms, and industry associations deluge them with hundreds of handy free “educational” materials. These agenda-driven tracts outline the merits of anything from clearcutting forests to disposable diapers—while dismissing the hard science of such phenoms as ozone depletion and global warming. Among its many such packages, Procter & Gamble released “Decision Earth,” distributed to 75,000 U.S. schools in 1997. Without a pinch of irony—and even claiming to build critical thinking skills--this teacher’s resource stated, “Clear cutting removes all trees within a stand of a few species to create new habitat for wildlife. Procter & Gamble uses this economically and environmentally sound method because it most closely mimics nature's own processes... Clear cutting also opens the forest floor to sunshine, thus stimulating growth and providing food for animals."
You know, I’ve seen nature do a whole lot of exceptional stuff, but I’ve never seen it clearcut a forest before!
Speaking of utter stupidity with zero irony targeted, appropriately, at young children with malleable cerebella, the American Nuclear Society offers a kit cheering on nuclear power. And nuclear waste removal? Piece o’ cake! "Anything we produce results in some 'leftovers' that are either recycled or disposed of--whether we're making electricity from coal or nuclear, or making scrambled eggs!" Yep, kids, toxic nuclear waste is just like those gooey eggshells mom left on the compost heap this morning. Let’s just all line up in the kitchen and make a great big plutonium-filled omelet!
Someone oughta take these fuckers out in a field and shoot off their lying asses. Then they can head straight for that special circle in hell reserved for grown adults who promote bald-faced lies to impressionable children.
But quickly pushing ethics aside, let’s get back to encouraging our kids to become titans in facilitating the deaths of millions…also known as nuclear scientists. EnergySolutions, the largest nuclear waste company in the US, has just the ticket: A curriculum, developed by the U.S. Department of Energy in collaboration with high school teachers everywhere. Designed for the best and brightest juniors and seniors, “The Harnessed Atom” contains 10 interdisciplinary modules encompassing energy and society, nuclear physics, atomic structure, reactor design and operation, and risk analysis.
Thus, if your little Einstein grows bored with conducting simple home experiments, such as designing the now-cliché basement meth lab, he can go home and slap together a nuclear reactor in his own backyard—using a few basic cooking utensils and dad’s Leatherman Blast.
Unfortunately, another DOE, the Mississippi Dept. of Education, has put its hand out for all such corporate freebies it can grab. You see, the state’s education budget isn’t in great shape, and the average high school teacher makes little over $20K. So having a preplanned curriculum probably looks like a much-needed time-and-effort reduction. And hey, it’s got such a positive message. Why teach reality when they will feel so much better entering the halls of denial at a young age? And conveniently enough, those damned liberals will also be put to the lie, as the EnergySolutions packet includes a trivia game citing the ecological damage introduced by bird-killing windmills and desert ecosystem-destroying solar farms. “We’re always looking for new ways to reach kids,” EnergySolutions’ executive director, Pearl Wright, states. Well, there’s one truth they’re telling. The company even offers its own personnel as “guest teachers.” So far, 400 Mississippi schools have drunk the Kool-Aid. Hoo-wee! It looks like the Mississippi delta will be slated for its very own reactor 30 years from now.
Curiously absent from such curricula are photos of those who survived Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island. Statistics on breast cancer rates for those living within 25 miles of nuclear reactors. Anecdotal accounts from Japanese citizens who had their skin burned off or were stricken with leukemia as a result of this “perfectly safe” form of energy. Children love stories and graphics, don’t they? Maybe we can make a game out of it!
I hope some hot Mississippi day, when the livin's easy and the catfish of denial are jumpin' in the stream, some smart little kid raises her hand in class and asks the obvious question: “If nuclear energy is so safe, then why do they use it in the world’s deadliest weapons?”
“Because, honey, it clears the forest floor and opens the land to sunshine.”
For further information, see the 6/23/11 New Republic piece, “Core Curriculum”: http://www.tnr.com/article/environment-and-energy/magazine/90545/nuclear-power-energy-industry-lobby-department-education-school
