“Back to school” may soon mean something more like “back to
political education camp” if liberal regulators have their way.
If your child is looking to get a high school diploma in
Maryland, reading, writing, and arithmetic may no longer be enough.
Students may soon have to be able to “[e]xplain that
differences in the behavior of individuals arise from the
interaction of culture and experience” in order to
graduate.
Despite it sounding more like the stuff of sociology than
hard environmental science, that line is taken from a
draft of the state’s new “Environmental Literacy
Curriculum.” The draft, according to William Reinhard of the
Maryland State Department of Education, is meant to “help guide
local [school] systems as they develop their own plans” to
integrate environmental literacy into their curricula.
And this isn’t just some far-flung proposal destined to
fail when put to a vote. Maryland’s Board of Education recently
adopted a requirement mandating that high schools “embed broad
environmental literacy standards into the pre-existing curriculum,”
in Reinhard’s words.
In fact, not only did the board adopt it, but the vote was
unanimous. And the bill — whose allies include the Audubon
Society, Gov. Martin O’Malley, and former state school
superintendent Nancy Grasmick — makes Maryland the first state to
require “environmental literacy” for high school
graduation.
According to Reinhard, the new regulation says each high
school must include an “environmental literacy” program in its
graduation requirements. While these programs are supposed to
encourage students to “maintain optimal relationships” with the
environment and preserve Maryland’s natural resources,
“environmental literacy” itself is not very strictly defined, and
— as shown by the curriculum excerpt above — its parameters may
extend far beyond traditional environmental issues.
Although Reinhard stressed that the programs are locally
designed by individual school systems, there is evidence that some
supporters of the new rule hope it will set a precedent for
national policy. For instance, Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD), who
thanked the board for passing its environmental literacy measure,
also introduced the No Child Left Inside Act in the U.S. House. It
would create a federal grant program for environmental
literacy education.
And the Maryland No Child Left Inside Coalition, which
announced it was “thrilled” with the board’s decision, is working
to add environmental literacy provisions to the No Child Left
Behind Act when it is reauthorized this year.
Although locally designed, each of the state’s
environmental literacy programs must be approved by the state
superintendent, who will evaluate it based on a set of standards,
including whether it ensures that students “understand and value
the interdependence between the environment and our health,
economy, and culture” and that they “develop and apply knowledge
and skills at the community level for cooperative action to protect
and sustain the environment.”
Reinhard also claims that “the new regulation
received broad support from both the [school] systems themselves
and the general public.”
But it certainly has its critics.
J.B. Jennings, a Maryland State Senator and former member
of the State House of Delegates Environmental Matters Committee, is
one of them. He appeared on Fox News to discuss the implications of
the environmental literacy requirement. Jennings worries that the
new standards are just an excuse for liberal educators to
indoctrinate their students, that they are simply another
opportunity for public schools to teach impressionable children to
adopt certain political views.
“What kind of education is it going to be?”
Jennings
asked. “Is it going to be fact-based? Or is
it going to be theory-based, which is usually politically, theory
driven?”
The above-mentioned curriculum draft doesn’t exactly
dispel Jennings’ fears. One of its provisions even states that
students shall “explain how groups and individuals can work to
promote and balance interests through: Government
policies…”
So the new guide for Maryland high schools suggests tax
dollars should pay for teachers to tell kids how the government can
solve their problems.
The guide also suggests the schools should convince
students that we are on the brink of an environmental crisis,
stating students shall “[i]nvestigate, analyze and explain how
human impacts threaten current global stability and if not
addressed, will irreversibly affect earth’s systems.”
Proponents of Maryland’s new requirement argue that
environmental education boosts student performance by involving
their local environments in a hands-on way that will motivate them
to achieve.
But while the importance of hands-on experience and
enthusiasm to academic success is widely accepted, there are plenty
of ways to incorporate these things into public education without
telling students what environmentally oriented laws to support and
what political opinions to hold. Labs, for instance, or
environmental education that is based in science rather than
political ideology are excellent ways to get students to experience
first-hand the subjects about which they learn.
Instead, Maryland has opted for a new mandate for its
public schools, which will remove power from local high schools,
giving the State Superintendent the authority to audit their
curricula for adherence to environmental literacy standards
(whatever they are), and possibly forcing them to limit other areas
of education to make room for the environment.
As Jennings
told Fox, “They can’t just keep
adding on and on, so they will have to make room for this by
pushing other things out of the curriculum…”
In fact, in a document published on the Maryland
Department of Education website, John Franklin of the Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development concedes there is a
conflict between time devoted to environmental literacy and time
devoted to more traditional subjects, such as science and math.
Franklin, alas, was arguing that the push to divert money
toward math and science education is misguided.
With national math and science scores lagging and
thousands of young minds vulnerable to school-driven political
influence, the country should think carefully before following
Maryland’s lead on environmental education.
