Here is the second post that was not posted as near as I can tell. REH
----- Original Message ----- Sent: Friday, January 18, 2002 11:17 AM Subject: Stoessel and the Right Wing Pedagogy To my friends on the List There are two issues that it makes absolutely no sense for any person who thinks ahead, and wishes to effect the type of future that we have, to fool around with. One is the artistic culture and the other is the environment. Education can be hedged as children are taught prejudices that enslave them for life. Health can be lied about until its terminal and even Religion can be returned to the areas of opinion and prejudice. Science can be mis-represented and the Law has periodic swings from loose goose to fascism and can be controlled by economics and political power. Economics is portrayed as the logical science but it falls regularly into wars and philosophical systems that end in misery and genocide. But the Arts are built around the physical perceptions of the body and the psychological expressivity of each individual. Creating in the Arts is about the ability to correctly make decisions in our world and to express ourselves with clarity and skill added to the tendency of every society to grow more psycho-physically dense and complicated over time. Such self development is the challenge to each individual living in contemporary society. That cultural density and complexity requires sophistication and a developing competance on the part of the population as a whole, if the culture is to evolve. Intelligent people grow bored easily and predictibility is the kiss of death in such a situation, especially if a blossoming complexity goes along with economic success, which it often does, when tied to technology. Again and again, in the history of great societies, Intelligent populations will make bad choices simply out of boredom or the predictability of the contemporary situation. The Creative aspects of the Arts are as chaotic as humanity at its most irresponsible and yet as disciplined as the most difficult engineering problem. It meets the emotional need for free ranging exploration and expression but within the context of an artistic work or product ultimately built upon the Pleasure Principle. e.g. A great many of the roots of engineering, for example, are to be found in the Art of Perspective in the Renaissance. The Arts are the eyes, ears, taste, feeling, symbolization and sense of every individual in a society. The headlights that go ahead of the automobile in the dark on the road of life. The combinations of the Arts, in culture, creates the models of identity and pride that makes societies have cohesion. They are rooted in the essence of being human and blossom as the highest ideals of imagination and the flight of human freedom. Trying to hold the Arts down or control them is like trying to stop the wind or keep a kite from flying. Or less romantically, like trying to stop the eyes from seeing something that one is drawn to but knows will not be easy to accept. Art is the vocation that is tied to freedom and though the current politicos and business moguls have economically taken over the libertarian political party that sprang from the arts, the home of liberty is still in the Arts. Art is the playground of humanity, with the purpose of developing taste, quality of observation, long term deferred gratification discipline and the ability to travil in time both into the past through the great traditional works and into the possibilities of the future through great contemporary explorations. Politicians, scientists, religious folks and money souls often resemble the three monkeys that don't see, hear or speak except in the accepted mores and time bound philosophical morals of the society. The Artists are not monkeys and they must have the stomach to go wherever their perceptions lead them and have the discipline to pursue the development of psycho-physical values as they interpret the contemporary reality to their culture within the medium of their talent. To ignore this is as Kazantzakis state: "To have a Bride with no eyes." You can get away with anything if you have evil tendencies. But on to John Stossel. This time it was not the Human body and psychology but the body of the Earth. As for the Environment? It is not about Stossel and the Right Wing being wrong, but is about the cost if they happen to be wrong. People have cleaned their houses for thousands of years. There was always "reasons" such as "It's more pleasant, or more beautiful or next to Godliness" but it wasn't until you SAW Dust Mites and had the connection to Asthma proven that you truly could prove the value of cleanliness. The connection between Dust Lice and Cockroaches and illness in the children of the poor has been as recent as the last decade. Why did people clean before ten years ago? Because it somehow made sense but it couldn't be scientifically "proven" before they made the connection with urban illness. They used to blame smell for the urban illness so they invented perfume but it was the sewers that took the bacteria away from the population, as well as the smells, that changed the health of the cities. Wrong reason, right answer. But cleaning your house and having a good sanitation system doesn't seem to be enough these days and the science doesn't answer why. I'm much more conservative than the so-called conservatives in this, in the sense that I don't have time to learn every nuance of the Environmental argument but I want my world to be safe for my offspring. I don't want my granddaughter to have to go through the terrible illnesses that my daughter has had to endure that are more than likely environmental, in her home, the city, and her school. The costs are immense (a whole college education) and you had better believe that as these environmental tests, that point to environmental causes for cancers, asthma, immune issues, etc, are developed, I will not be the only one who has rage, against the minions of business who harness government regulations and condemn not only their workers but the people downwind from the plants to lives of misery and sickness. The future for these groups, whether business, religious or political will be as the villains and "evil doers" of ignorance. Their excuses, that they didn't "know any better" because their own biased tests were inconclusive, does not remove the disgrace and shame from their history and their children's heritage. America is a very young world in history. Eventually, disgrace will have meaning and the truth will out. I have seen many who were the powerful in the arts, fall to become the provincial, chauvinistic and ignorant as Art progressed beyond their simple likes and dislikes. How much more powerful are the real life and death issues like the environment? We feel for Enron's employees and blanch when the government officials refer to their losses as the "glory of Capitalism." How much more will we feel for the human sacrifice being practiced in the name of industry and all of the economic "isms" for short term gains to ultimate long term annihilation. Again I say, it is not that they are wrong clearly wrong about the environment, although I believe they are, but we loose little but a few bucks if they are right. On the other hand if they are wrong that is another matter indeed. Ray Evans Harrell http://www.thenation.com/docPrint.mhtml?i=special&s=manilov20011220 >From the Nation Magazine, The Right in the Classroom by MARIANNE MANILOV "Tampering With Nature," John Stossel's June 29, 2001, special, became a public relations problem for ABC when several parents demanded that interviews with their children be removed from the show, complaining that they had been misled into believing that it was to be an Earth Day special. What missed the media spotlight, however, was that "Tampering With Nature" was part of a five-year right-wing effort to discredit and defund environmental education. Since 1996, Michael Sanera, a former adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation, has been going around the country preaching the message that kids in school today are being scared into environmentalism by their teachers. When Stossel decided to do a show on the subject, Sanera was there to help. A group called Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (which serves as a pesticide-industry front group, according to Sheldon Rampton, an author and editor at PR Watch), posted a message from Sanera that read: "I have been contacted by ABC News. A producer for John Stossel is working on a program on environmental education. He needs examples of kids who have been 'scared green' by schools teaching doomsday environmentalism in the classroom. He needs kids and/or parents to appear on camera. I have some examples, but I need more." An ABC spokesperson said that as soon as they found out about the e-mail, they told Sanera to "stop and desist." John Borowski, a teacher from Portland, responded to the Sanera e-mail posing as an "upset parent" who agreed with Sanera's ideas. Stossel's producers contacted him within days. (They later dropped him out of the interview pool.) Sanera declined to be interviewed. Sanera's "scared green" message is also the message Stossel used to lead his special. "He [Stossel] started asking leading questions, and it was very clear what he wanted to get," said John Quigley, executive director of Earth Day Los Angeles, who was present for Stossel's interviews with the children. After the interview, some parents contacted the network to withdraw the releases they had signed, and an environmental activist pointed out that Stossel's conduct violated the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, which calls for "special sensitivity when dealing with children." The program ran with the children's faces obscured and their interviews cut, but Stossel talked on camera about why that was done, and he went out on the talk-show circuit to defend his actions, telling Fox's Bill O'Reilly that schoolchildren were being "brainwashed" by their teachers. Sanera was, until recently, director of the Center for Environmental Education Research at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank whose funders have included the Scaife Foundation, Ford, General Motors and Dow Chemical, and which hosts a website (www.savejohnstossel.com) set up after Stossel came under attack for his story on organic food. Sanera now teaches at a charter school and edits books with Jane Shaw, a senior associate at the Political Economy Research Center, which describes itself as "the center for free market environmentalism." Sanera and Shaw authored the book Facts, Not Fear: A Parents' Guide to Teaching Children About the Environment. Facts, Not Fear bills itself as "the first guidebook to help parents and teachers give their children and students a more balanced, science-based view of the many environmental controversies they encounter." The book, sold on Amazon.com and in bookstores nationwide, is a credible-looking organizing manual that raises questions about environmental issues and environmental textbooks. Common beliefs about rainforests, endangered species and global warming are all challenged. A panel of over 30 "acknowledged experts" reviewed each chapter. What Facts, Not Fear leaves out is that many of its experts have ties to right-wing corporations and corporate polluters. Fred Seitz and Sallie Baliunas, for example, who review the chapter on ozone, have worked with the George C. Marshall Institute, which is funded by conservative foundations like Bradley and Scaife. M.B. Hocking, another of the experts, formerly worked for Dow Chemical. Donald Stedman has written for Heritage and worked for Ford Motor Company. The book, published by Regnery, also has ties to the religious right. The copyright belongs to the Alabama Family Alliance, part of the Focus on the Family network. Citizen groups who have begun organizing and sharing information have called into question what Sanera and Shaw mean by balance. Jeff Sellen, co-director of Citizens for Environmental Education in Washington State, was part of one such effort. "The main argument is to return 'balance' to environmental education," Sellen said. "What Sanera wants to do to balance environmental education is to give equal weight to scientific opinions that say global warming is not a problem. Of course, only fringe scientists think that." Shaw says she and Sanera have reviewed over 130 textbooks and that she thinks the environmental crisis is overexaggerated. "One of the books we reviewed had a visual where New York City was underwater," she said. "They are saying that this will happen in our children's lifetimes." While Shaw thinks global warming is "quite possible," she also thinks that "To say that it is getting warmer does not mean we will have any kind of severe negative problem." She thinks the Stossel broadcast was good and that it "had an impact." "John Stossel wasn't just saying your kids are being mistaught," Shaw said. "He was saying that we as the public misunderstand these issues. We read about them in the paper, and it is very sensational. Newspapers tend to emphasize the scary and the negative." The Stossel special aired at an opportune moment, just as the reauthorization of the National Environmental Education Act was moving through Congress as part of HR 1, the education reform legislation. The bill had wide bipartisan support, as indicated by its Senate co-sponsors, Republican James Inhofe and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sanera and the Competitve Enterprise Institute actively worked against the legislation. "There were a number of items, letters and things that were written by Sanera and others that were sent directly to Congress," said Rick Wilke, University of Wisconsin distinguished professor of environmental education. In addition, Wilke says, "We were very concerned about the impact of the show." Wilke's concern was well founded. The legislation was taken out of HR 1.
