This is an alarming story, prepared by the Center for Public Integrity. . Teaching materials are being distributed by the fossil fuel industry to elementary schools.
It begins:
“Jennifer Merritt’s first-graders at Jefferson Elementary School in Pryor, Oklahoma, were in for a treat. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, the students gathered in late November for story time with two special guests, state Rep. Tom Gann and state Sen. Marty Quinn.
“Dressed in suits, the Republican lawmakers read aloud from “Petro Pete’s Big Bad Dream,” a parable in which a Bob the Builder lookalike awakens to find his toothbrush, hardhat and even the tires on his bike missing. Abandoned by the school bus, Pete walks to Petroville Elementary in his pajamas.
“Petro Pete’s Big Bad Dream” was published in 2016. Oklahoma Energy Resources Board
“It sounds like you are missing all of your petroleum by-products today!” his teacher, Mrs. Rigwell, exclaims, extolling oil’s benefits to Pete and fellow students like Sammy Shale. Before long, Pete decides that “having no petroleum is like a nightmare!”
“The tale is the latest in an illustrated series by the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board, a state agency funded by oil and gas producers. The board has spent upwards of $40 million over the past two decades on K-12 education with a pro-industry bent, including hundreds of pages of curricula, a speaker series and an afterschool program — all at no cost to educators.
“A similar program in Ohio shows teachers how to “frack” Twinkies using straws to pump for cream and advises on the curriculum for a charter school that revolves around shale drilling. A national program whose sponsors include BP and Shell claims it’s too soon to tell if the earth is heating up, but “a little warming might be a good thing.”
“Decades of documents reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity reveal a tightly woven network of organizations that works in concert with the oil and gas industry to paint a rosy picture of fossil fuels in America’s classrooms. Led by advertising and public-relations strategists, the groups have long plied the tools of their trade on impressionable children and teachers desperate for resources.”
As an antidote, science teachers should show “Gasland,” the award-winning documentary that shows how fracking destroys the water supply and kills animals. The most memorable scene: Water running out of a kitchen faucet. The home-owner strikes a match, and the chemical-rich water catches fire.
Debate and discuss.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane First off, though Oklahoma is by no means alone in this sham, it doesn’t surprise me that it’s in–wait for it–Oklahoma.
Second, boo-hoo, we all use tires (as example). I don’t remember my parents, or theirs, having an intelligent choice. It’s indeed a lemming world we live in (is that their point?).
However, the “everything-useful-is-made-of-oil” story points to this also: not only is the fossil fuel industry responsible for planet-WARMING, it’s also responsible for most of the plastic and rubber-related TRASH in its oceans and everywhere else.
I think most of us acknowledge our complicity in the problem and recognize what a CONCERTED effort it will take to change our lemming course–but that’s not the question. The question is: does or will the oil industry EVER join those who are interested in qualified change to do something about it. Sigh . . . .
LikeLike
“Twinkie Fracking”
Twinkie Fracking
In the school
Exxon backing
As a rule
Twinkie pumping
With a straw
Yummy something
From the maw
LikeLike
This post illustrates the dangers of giving corporations access to students in public schools. This is not valid curriculum; this is brainwashing. Educators, not corporations, should be making those decisions. For many decades public schools operated without too much commercial influence. Of course, schools hired outside vendors to provide goods or services, but the bulk of decisions came from trained professionals. Today, many decisions about content in public schools are made by corporations without any input from educators. Instead of a wall to protect us from immigrants; our young people in public schools need a wall to protect them from third partly vendors and commercialization.
LikeLike
It’s part of the same privatization pattern that has also encroached upon other areas — eg, the military.
And the murder of 17 civilians in Iraq by the security firm Blackwater ( which has since changed it’s name several times to distance itself from it’s dastardly deeds) is a perfect example of what happens when private entities take over critical government roles and make critical decisions.
LikeLike
A few years ago, I was volun-told to help set up a library at a charter school. I was disgusted to find a series of nonfiction books about ‘kid-friendly companies’. I remember titles like “Kellogg’s,” “Coca-Cola,” and “McDonald’s.” It was from a series called Brands We Know by Bellwether Media. They also publish a series called Dangerous Jobs which includes Lumberjack, Animal Control Officer…and Coal Miner.
My apologies if this posts twice.
LikeLike
I wonder if the book about Coca-Cola mentions that fact that the original formula included cocaine, and that Bayer Aspirin created heroin as a medicine to help break the cocaine habit.
http://disinfo.com/2010/03/the-bayer-company-made-heroin/
LikeLike
Actually, if you ever take a tour of the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, as I did when my children were young, they do mention the the original recipe.
LikeLike
Lloyd,
In Peru, the native people make coca tea from coca leaves.
It’s not cocaine (needs to be chemically modified for that) but is a moderate stimulant, not unlike caffeine. It also apparently suppresses hunger somewhat.
I took a climbing trip to Ecuador and Peru in the eighties (to climb Mt. Chimbarazo in Ecuador) and they served coca tea on the Peruvian airlines. Not sure whether they still do.
But I had also read that Coca Cola originally had actual cocaine in it. The times they are a changin’.
LikeLike
In Asia, many chew betel nut.For users, in Vietnam, it turned the teeth black. When I was serving in the Marines in Vietnam, I saw many a mouth full of black teeth.
“It is used by almost a tenth of the world’s population. It gives people a buzz equivalent to six cups of coffee and is used variously as a symbol of love, marriage and a cure for indigestion and impotence.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31921207
In East Africa, they chew khat.
Some view khat as a relatively mild stimulant that aids sociality others to view it as an “addictive drug”.
https://qz.com/783611/the-rise-fall-then-grudging-acceptance-of-khat-east-africas-controversial-stimulant/
It is obvious that poverty drives many to find a cheap natural drug that helps numb their pain.
LikeLike
No teacher is that desperate for teaching materials. Anyone with half a brain and a modicum of integrity should reject this nonsense.
LikeLike
In most cases, the decision to use these propagandistic materials is made at the administrative level. The teachers are presented with a fait accompli: teach this glop or be on the permanent shale list. Of course that doesn’t stop a teacher from improvising and adding some truth to all the toxic sludge.
LikeLike
Readers should be aware of tthe following source of research on commercialism in schools. Recent work has addressed survellience of students. I hope that this unit of the National Education Policy Center will look at the more blatant intrusions of corporations on curriculum content and student/teacher incentive programs.
http://nepc.colorado.edu/ceru-home
LikeLike
The only consolation, I guess, is that when the Earth’s environment, the environment humans need to survive, is destroyed and our species is extinct. Exxon and the oil industry along with all the autocratic billionaires, that probably think like Trump, will be gone too. I guess the current CEO’s and major stockholders figure out they will be long gone by the time that happens and they obviously don’t care to even think about what happens after they are dead.
I mean, how long before Trump’s Florida estate is under water? For sure, the Kremlin’s Agent Orange will be long gone by then.
The dinosaurs dominated the planet for more than a hundred million years before the environment they needed to survive changed dramatically and they died off. The human species isn’t even going to make it to 10,000 years of world domination.
LikeLike
“The only consolation, I guess, is that when the Earth’s environment, the environment humans need to survive, is destroyed and our species is extinct. Exxon and the oil industry along with all the autocratic billionaires, that probably think like Trump, will be gone too.”
Well, if their plan works out, they’ll be living happily in space by then. It remains to be seen if they can pull that off before they destroy the planet.
LikeLike
Imagine how happy they, the billionaires, will be living in a weightless tin can in outer-space with recycled air depending on machinery that wears out. While their muscles atrophy and their bones turn brittle, they will have little or no fresh food. All liquids with water in them must be recycled including urine. Without a method to grow enough fresh food, they will run out and starve or lack proper nutrition to stay healthy.
They are welcome to that world, but I don’t think they will be happy. Whatever station they can build in the next century or so will be cramped, bombarded with endless high doses of radiation and be at the mercy of other satellites and rocks hitting them at any time and destroying an environment more fragile than the earth.
Humanity is decades if not centuries away from building stations in space that will be self-sufficient; large enough to grow crops and generate fresh air, and for that to happen, research and innovation must continue without someone like BetsyDeVos who thinks all life started 6,000 years ago and ignores all the science getting in the way of her thinking.
At the pace the billionaire autocrats are destroying the earth’s environment as they grow their wealth at horrible costs to the environment, they will not have time to build a station that will offer them the security and comfort they are used to on Earth, and even their huge fortunes may not be adequate to fund building one when that technology arrives.
https://www.space.com/8876-international-space-station-numbers.html
LikeLike
All good points. I wish them well then. I only wish I believed in an afterlife so I could watch them enduring all that.
LikeLike
They watched Pixar’s “WALL-E” once too often and took exactly the wrong lesson from it. All they saw was the giant starliner.
LikeLike
The billionaires (Eg, Elon Musk) have worked out the easy part of the equation.
The rocketship to take them to outer space.
They just have not figured out the hard part — how to survive on Mars or an asteroid.
With any luck for the rest of us, they will leave earth orbit before they figure out the hard part.
Otherwise, they threaten to doom us all.
LikeLike
The hard part is how they will survive once their supply of food in toothpaste tubes, water oxygen, and spare parts runs out. If we are really fortunate they will ship tons of beef and beer to their ship with barbecues and when they light the first barbecue after they drink too many beers, BOOM! We are rid of them.
LikeLike
Well, a few of Elon Musk’s rockets have exploded in massive fire balls, so maybe no charcoal is necessary for the barbecue.
I actually get a kick out of Elon Musk talking about how he is going to get people to Mars by 2025.
He actually admits there will be a high probability of failure — and he is just talking about getting people there, not surviving once they get there.
I used to live in Arizona not too far from Biosphere 2, a failed attempt fo humans to live in a self contained environment. It failed, among other reasons because the CO2 content built up to dangerous levels.
People like Musk are utterly clueless about how hard it would be to just survive physically in a place where the environment has to be completely created and maintained. Such people take for granted that we get these surfaces free of charge on planet Earth.
Musk is a smart guy, but like other billionaires, when he gets out of his own very narrow area of tech experience, he is woefully ignorant.
LikeLike
https://youtu.be/9Jy2qdTCs0g
A little older audience . The whole series is hilarious. So it has been going on for some time . I suspect that one of our bloggers may have been in the Classroom .
Listen to his numbers and then see how far we have come.
” in 2010, the wealthiest 5 percent held 63 percent of the nation’s wealth and wealthiest 20 percent held 89 percent of it. This means that the bottom 80 percent of the country held just 11 percent of its wealth. The story is worse for non-home wealth, with the bottom 80 percent holding just 4.6 percent of it.”
LikeLike
Yes, well, the top marginal income tax rate in 1955 was 91%.
Under Eisenhower, a Republican President!
Of course, Ike would never get the Republucan nomination in this day and age.
LikeLike
OMG…this is SICK!
LikeLike
Oklahoma or Arkansas in 55
LikeLike
Yes, dienne77, DAM, Lloyd & Zorba–the movie “Elysium” would become reality (they all must have seen it & are satisfied w/their prospects).
LikeLike
How long would it take to build a station like Elysium and how much would it cost? I don’t think the billionaire autocratic have the time or money and someone like North Korea could easily shoot a missile at it and blow it up.
In the film, the super weathy have developed a large, rotating space station above a dystopic Earth by the year 2154. The station comes stocked with mansions, grass, trees, water and gravity.
That’s 137 years and they haven’t even started building it yet. They will never make it.
Major spaceflight advances
Actually building an Elysium-like space station would require some major advances in humanity’s ability to live in space for an extended period of time and it might not be able to happen in 150 years, Uhran said.
“If you threw everything you had at it, could you reach a space station of the scale of Elysium in 150 years?” Uhran told SPACE.com. “That’s a pretty tall order.”
Scientists would need to develop a new kind of propulsion that could haul enough material into orbit to create a huge Elysium-like station. At the moment, chemical propulsion won’t cut it. Nuclear propulsion could be a viable possibility eventually, but the idea isn’t ready for prime time yet.
https://www.space.com/22287-elysium-space-station-science-nasa.html
LikeLike
In addition, with fundamentalist Christian idiots like Betsy DeVos moving away from science and toward creationism and trust in God, the odds of building such a station diminish drastically.
Before anyone could build it, the science-based billionaire autocrats that would want to build such a station and move to it would end up being in a hot war with the Christian fundament billionaire autocrats that trust in God and creationism, and that struggle will eat up all the resources and money.
In the end everyone, I mean everyone, loses.
LikeLike
A space station in earth orbit that can be resupplied from earth is easy. It’s already been done.
What is not so easy is a space out post on Mars or an asteroid.
By the way, Lloyd: the physicist Freeman Dyson actually worked with some Manhattan project physicists after WW2 to develop a gigantic nuclear powered rocket that dropped nuclear bombs out it’s “butthole”.
It was called Project Orion and there are some pretty good documentaries on it.
It MIGHT have actually worked ( I say might, because if any one of the nukes did not make it out the butthole before they exploded, the whole ship would have been vaporized) but it did have one minor drawback. It required exploding something like 1000 small nukes in the atmosphere to launch it.
Orion was another case of people with knowledge of one area (physics ) paying little attention to another (ecology).
There is also another idea for lifting stuff into near earth orbit: a space elevator
But to say that that has some rather significant engineering requirements is a serious understatement.
And such an elevator would be a sitting duck if billionaires were using it to resupply their gated neighborhood in the sky
LikeLike
If the billionaires wanted to live in a space station, they would have the ultimate gated community. But it would not be as luxurious as what they now enjoy. And they would miss the best part of being a billionaire: the contrast with the little people.
Think how horrible they would feel living in an egalitarian society of billionaires!
LikeLike
A space stationed filled with all the Donald Trumps of the world would be the ultimate justice for the rest of us. They end up eating each other.
LikeLike
A space station in earth orbit, being resupplied from earth, is indeed easy, Poet, and is being done.
But this supposes that those left on earth are still willing to resupply the billionaire space station, and that everything doesn’t totally fall apart down here, leaving no technology, no fuel, no capability to supply those billionaires in earth orbit.
And as far as Elon Musk is concerned, son Zorba thinks that he (along with most of the billionaires) is a complete selfish, clueless jerk, and he wants Musk to offer to be a passenger on his “rocket to Mars.” Assuming it’s ever built.
Personally, if it is, which I doubt, I wold strap Musk to the outside of the rocket ship.
LikeLike
I’ve read about both the nuclear propulsion method you mentioned and the elevator. The only difference is that the nuclear propulsion system I read about would only be used for ships traveling deep space from star to star and not for a lunch from earth to orbit.
5 REAL Possibilities for Interstellar Travel | Space Time | PBS Digital
LikeLike
So, Zorba
You want Musk to ride the rocket like Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove?
LikeLike
Yep, you got it. 😆
LikeLike
Musk could kick his feet like swimming under water to help with the propulsion. :o) I’ve read that he is a demanding bully in the workplace of his companies.
LikeLike
That’s what son Zorba says, Lloyd, but Musk
Isn’t the only one like this.
LikeLike
Lloyd
You are correct that the Project Orion ship was not intended to put a large space station into earth orbit, though it probably could have been used for that purpose.
Dyson and the physicists he worked with wanted to personally visit Mars and other planets in our solar system.
So it was intended mainly for interplanetary travel.
But Dyson did also envision a super Orion the size of a small City for going to the nearest star system (about 4 light years away) Dyson calculated that his fastest version would take about 130 years! So I doubt he would have had many volunteers.
LikeLike
What we have learned is that the human race doesn’t have the technology or infrastructure yet to support an artificial L5 Lagrange colony aboard a station in orbit between Earth and its moon or even further out beyond the moon in a stable orbit around the sun, and to reach that point in time, we would have to hold the anti-science Christian and Islamic fundaments from gaining power over our political systems and/or destroying civilization as we know it. Trump and the current leadership of the GOP are taking several steps back on that timeline. I regret saying this but I think the United States will not be the country that achieves this goal. I think it will be China (unless the US or Russia destroy China in a nuclear war) because in China’s political system religious dogma does not have even a toe in the door and it will not be easy for China’s billionaires to buy the Chinese Communist Party like American billionaires are buying the two major parties in the U.S.
LikeLike
We once had a separation of church and state and by law STILL SHOULD. We need to add separation of corporation and education NOW! Words cannot begin to convey the horror that children should be inflicted with having to read such a piece in a place of what is supposed to uphold their education.
LikeLike
The Lorax. “I speak for the trees.”
LikeLike