Energy Education:

What Are We Teaching Our Children?

By Jason Hayes, American Coal Council

There is a disturbing lack of accurate and balanced energy information provided for kids in our schools today, and if the actions of one of the nation’s venerable education-focused publishing houses were any indication, school children across the country would be ill served in this area.

In May 2011, educational publisher Scholastic removed “the United States of Energy” from its list of publications. As a non-profit coal industry association had sponsored the printing of this publication, Scholastic representatives claimed to have pulled it to remove any taint of organizational or funding bias. However, in the eyes of the anti-coal special interests that mounted the pressure to stop production of the book, Scholastic’s actions were due solely to their two-day campaign. Comment throughout media and environmental industry outlets indicated similar views; an intense public relations campaign, spearheaded by an ideologically driven teacher, and then picked up by powerful environmental and anti-industry special interests as well as a host of media organizations forced Scholastic’s PR department into damage control mode.

Unfortunately for the kids who had been using the book, these groups ignored information in the text on renewable energy (wind, solar, and hydroelectric), nuclear, and natural gas and chose to focus solely on the fact that “the United States of Energy” informed children that coal was an important energy resource. They demanded that the publication vilify coal as toxic and a dangerous pollutant. In what was widely viewed as a desperate PR move to quell growing special interest pressure, Scholastic backed away from their history of producing balanced energy education materials and pulled the publication. This move left school children to be plied with a growing diet of anti-industry and anti-energy rhetoric.

While Scholastic’s actions are disheartening, it is important to remember that they are only one of the outlets producing energy education materials. Capable organizations like CEDAR, NEED, and the American Coal Foundation are still publishing much needed educational materials and filling the gap left by Scholastic.

All the information that’s fit to print?

It is important to note that while Scholastic retreats from presenting balanced, fact-, science-, and economics-based information to children, they are not at all shy about their decision to continue publishing materials from climate change gurus and environmental activists.

Scholastic still proudly partners with a self-described “global warming activist” to publish The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming (www.scholastic.com/downtoearth/). This book is co-authored by Laurie David, as noted above a self-described “global warming activist.” David was also the producer of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth,1 and acts as a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Scholastic’s website lists David’s work as an “essential guide” for school children and the website, along with the book provides detailed instructions on how children can become politically active in the environmental movement. The book and website push children to sign pledges to “go green,” they provide pre-written letters to elected officials that lobby for specific pieces of legislation, as well as advocating Kyoto-style cuts to greenhouse gases and energy production.

When asked in a Publisher’s weekly interview, David openly stated her aim in writing the guide was to train children up as political and social “agents of change” and then motivate those children to “influence” their parents as well. David noted that if environmental and social activists wanted to “reach the parents,” they needed to first “go for the kids.”