California Public Schools Invited BP To Help Develop Environmental Curriculum

[ensho]

http://www.truth-out.org/california-public-schools-invited-bp-to-help-develop-environmental-curriculum63092


When students in California return to school this fall, they will have a brand new environmental curriculum — developed, in part, by oil giant BP. The Sacramento Bee reported today that BP helped California’s public schools form an environmental curriculum to be used by over 6 million public school students (kindergarten through 12th grade) in 1,000 districts. The Bee reports that state officials included BP on a technical team that “was responsible for developing the program’s guiding principles.”

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Nevertheless, California officials defended BP’s involvement in interviews with the Bee, saying that the company’s involvement was “minor” and that it was “important to get all sides of the environmental debate involved in developing the classroom materials.” The problem is that the side BP generally represents is not based in fact.
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somebody got paid

Calif. kids have a hard road to hoe

[FirstLight]

1. Now wait a second...

Before immediately vilifying the Corporation, let's think of the people who had a hand in developing this. Perspective:
They are do doubt mid level management, and probably either reside in the PR dept, or include a few interns from R&D for data. The objective was probably to provide some general info about the oil, what it is and where it is and how they get it (which would be industry standard info)...now the 'environmental' part is negotiable. They can prostelytize about how they do it 'responsibly' but it would hopefully get cut if if were too commercial...
Having not seen the whole cirriculum, nor seeing the specific contribution made by BP, I think I will reserve judgement for later...

My kids attend a Public school in an environmentally sensitive area. We will see if this 'new cirriculum' makes it to these parts. meanwhile, my kids plant trees in forest fire areas, raise trout in the classroom and release them into the streams, and take samples of the soil & water to watch the health of the ecosystem. That's stewardship, and that goes alot farther than some classroom powerpoint bullshit. I wish I could offer the same thing to all the urban kids out there, we need to get our hands in the dirt if we intend to have a relationship with the earth!

[Nuclear Unicorn]

2. "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" by Tony Hayward

Oily pelicans are bad for your dividends but everyone knows the oily bird catches the worm.

The End

*bows*

[m00nbeam]

3. Talk about wolves in the henhouse

I can only imagine the "environmental" curriculum developed by BP is actually propaganda from big oil.

[Dappleganger]

4. Great, now let's invite AIG and Lehman Bros. to write our economics books.