In all honesty, I also fear that many of our professional positions and organizations have already been infiltrated by the view that the earth is our horn of plenty and all we will have to do is a better job of managing it. Granted, infiltrated is probably too strong a term, but the names of the companies and bureaucracies that a few years ago would have raised more than an eyebrow in our field often appear prominently now on the credit pages of our materials, the exhibits at our conferences, and below the names of some of our most visible leaders. If we are serious about our mission, we had better start asking ourselves why some of the agencies and industries that helped create our environmental problems in the first place, are now suddenly sponsoring things in the environmental education field, and what that means for our future.

Project Wild, for example, is a collection of supplemental activities that has come under increasing fire from both animal welfare and animal rights groups, and has been strongly criticized for its subtle emphasis upon management as the only viable approach to our relationship with the other life on this planet. (As a Canadian observer put it, Project Wild should really be called Project Tame -- Towards A Managed Environment.) Yet many environmental education organizations appear almost as if they are being held hostage by the funding available in that network:

	They give over chunks of their newsletters to Project Wild events.
	They block out entire sections on their conference schedules for Project Wild activities.
	They end up with practically interchangeable leadership between Project Wild and their own supposedly independent professional organizations.

You see, there were lots of people out there in the seventies who aspired to become environmental education leaders, but they were often left floundering around with nothing much to do. Then almost overnight many of them became "trainers." They were invited to special sessions and given free materials to dispense. They had support money available for attending conferences and conducting workshops. Most importantly, they had learned at long last how to tap into agency and industry budgets (keep in mind that for the environmental education stepchild this was something akin to finding the Holy Grail in a box of hand-me-downs).

I know, all this sounds rather brutal, but I don't mean it that way. These people were good people (I hope I can still count some of them as friends), and most of them no doubt had their hearts in the right place, but I think they let themselves be misled about the real nature of the "projects." They sold out without knowing it. Only the most honest and courageous leaders out there will be able to confront themselves and challenge what has become of their "professional" roles and organizations.

It would be different too if the project materials were passed off for what they actually represent, i.e., supplemental collections from which most teachers only use at best a couple of activities. But no, these collections are held up as if they are the answer for EE. State coordinators devise elaborate curriculum plans based on the infusion model, then push the projects as if they were actually designed to accomplish those aims, and finally claim that they have EE in their state when the vast majority of their teachers still do practically nothing. It is a serious educational fraud that's being perpetuated in many places. And it is costing the taxpayers a lot of money. Somebody should call them on this.

Regardless of any disclaimers I might add, some will read these words as merely the whine of sour grapes, but I would hope that our indignation might be seen as a heartfelt challenge to the field instead. Believe me, we take no pleasure in setting ourselves up as a lightning rod like this. We have little to gain and much to lose, for we realize we are not perfect ourselves. But in all good conscience we can remain silent no longer. If we are serious about the original mission of environmental education, then all of us have to get farther away from pushing management messages and closer to modeling personal choices.

Continue... Chapter Two: Acclimatization... A Sense Of Relationship With The Earth

Earth Education... A New Beginning Copyright © 1990 The Institute for Earth Education. All Rights Reserved.