“Science” is a magic word when it comes to education. Louisiana parents, however, have discovered what mischief can be concealed behind the word “science.”
The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education decided this spring that, starting in the next school year, a new subject called “Environmental Science” will qualify as one of three science credits required for high school graduation. Apparently, the main purpose of this new regulation is to accommodate those students who are unable to pass the real science courses, chemistry and physics.
In order to expedite this change so it can begin in the 1986-87 school year, the Department of Education set up a special textbook adoption schedule. The Louisiana procedure involves citizen review of textbooks, and that is how parents found out about the political and social indoctrination hiding under the name “science.”
The principal theme of the Environmental Science textbooks is a cardinal concept of liberalism: the scarcity of resources. Once the child is drilled in the dogma that the world’s resources cannot support its growing population, then the child is ready to swallow the liberal “solutions” for this problem: (a) government control of population growth and (b) government control of resources, production and consumption.
The passion for population control, even by forcible methods and economic discrimination, is evident in all the textbooks. As a model for reducing births, the books point to Mainland China (where mandatory late-term abortions and cut-offs of food and housing allowances have dramatically reduced the birth rate).
A typical example is this passage from the textbook titled Global Science: Energy, Resources, Environment (Kendall-Hunt Publishers): “It is possible that some of the social forces that exist in the United States, and to varying degrees in many other developed nations, may bring about a stabilization of population. These include the demand for:
(1) new roles by women, the promotion of the benefits of smaller families,
(2) the choice to begin a family at a later age,
(3) the demand by many women for freedom over their reproductive functions,
(4) the widespread availability of birth control devices and information, and
(5) the removal of the tax incentives for having large families.
“If these types of indirect measures aren’t adequate, an idea put forward by economist Kenneth Boulding would stabilize population. His plan is to have the government issue transferable birth licenses. Each woman would receive an allotment of reproduction licenses that correspond to replacement fertility. In the United States, the allotment would be 2.1 licenses.
“The licenses would be divisible in units of one-tenth, which Boulding calls the deci-child. Possession of ten deci-child units confers the legal right to one birth. The licenses are freely transferable by sale or gift. Thus, those who want more than two children and can afford to buy the extra licenses or can acquire them by gift are free to do so.”
The passion for tight government control of our economy is evident in another selection from Global Science: “The idea of enoughness recognizes that a given individual or family can only handle and enjoy a fixed number of goods. Possessions, beyond that, are mere greed. For each individual, there is a state of adequacy… One possible way of accomplishing this is by establishing maximum and minimum income levels and all the gradations between… As your income rose, you’d pay more tax until you reached the point where all your increased income went for taxes.”
Naturally, the myth of a no-growth economy and blind faith in government controls lead to animosity toward the free market. Here is a typical example from Global Science of how the students are poisoned against the private enterprise system.
“Arguments against the Market system…
1. Markets can be manipulated and made non-competitive…
2. Since it takes money to make money, the free market can allow the rich to hold onto economic and political power…
3. Free market forces by themselves do not provide for social needs (such as schools and police protection)…
4. Free markets tend to be unstable…
5. The coldness of the market causes alienation between the labor force and management…”
Louisiana is the first state to adopt Environmental Science textbooks. Louisiana could do a service for the rest of the country if it would alert other states to the phoniness of the “science” in the textbooks available for this subject.
