Taking on Big Coal’s Curriculum

Adam Sanchez at Common Dreams, 6/29/11:

For years dirty energy corporations have created education materials marketed to young children in an attempt to shape the discussion around environmental issues. After the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Exxon created a lesson plan “about the healthy, flourishing wildlife in Prince William Sound, Alaska, which showed beautiful eagles, frolicking sea otters, and sea birds in their habitat.” Last year, oil giant BP was exposed for helping to write California state’s environmental curriculum for over six million children. So it should come as no surprise that Scholastic recently partnered with the American Coal Foundation to produce “The United States of Energy,” a 4th grade curriculum designed to boost the “clean” image of dirty coal.

Scholastic, a $2 billion corporation whose educational materials are in 9 out of 10 classrooms in the United States, is no stranger to partnering with the corporate world to market products and brands to children. Last year Scholastic teamed up with SunnyD, the juice company whose product has been labeled by consumer groups as “junk juice” because of its high sugar and very low fruit juice content despite being marketed as a “real fruit beverage.” Marketing the campaign through their Parent & Child magazine, Scholastic agreed to donate 20 books to any class that sent in 20 UPC labels of SunnyD drinks. The ten schools that collected the most labels (ranging from 13,000 to 30,000 SunnyD labels per school!) were awarded hundreds of books.

Scholastic has also partnered with Shell Oil Company to create science lessons that explore “energy conservation and practical ‘green’ solutions,” which help focus students on their own individual “carbon footprint” while conveniently ignoring Shell’s much larger one. Scholastic’s “Shedding Light on Energy” teacher’s guide that is still promoted on their website (along with the Shell curriculum) was written by the Chamber of Commerce, whose unwavering climate change denial was too much for even Apple, the company named the biggest polluter in the technology industry by Greenpeace. Other previous Scholastic clients have included McDonald’s, Cartoon Network, Nestle and Disney.

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