Why Are They Lying to Our Children?

"I don't have a future." With tears streaming down her face, a 13-year-old girl made this bleak assessment to her father. To back up her pessimism, she had brought home from school a mimeographed sheet listing the horrors that awaited her generation in the next 25 years: Worldwide famine, overpopulation, air pollution so bad that everyone would wear a gas mask, befouled rivers and streams that would mandate cleansing tablets in drinking water... a greenhouse effect that would melt the polar ice caps and devastate U.S. coastal cities... a cancer epidemic brought on by damage to the ozone layer. Moved by the girl's misery, her father, Herbert I. London of the Hudson Institute and New York University, wrote a book, Why Are They Lying to Our Children? The book documents how some of the myths of the 1960s and 1970s and some much older than that are being perpetuated and taught as gospel truth in some of our schools. And the book raises a question in our minds: Will the next generation have any better understanding of science and technology - both their merits and their problems - than our own?

Professor London's book is not a plea for unbridled technology. But it is a plea for balance. And school textbooks, he believes, are notoriously unbalanced. In dealing with environmental questions, for example, no textbook the professor could find made any mention of the following facts: Total automobile emissions of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide in the U.S. are less than half what they were from 1957 to 1967.

The amount of unhealthy sulfur dioxide in the air has been steadily declining since 1970. The bacteria level in the Hudson River declined by more than 30 percent between 1966 and 1980. Textbooks, Professor London finds, mythologize nature as eternally benign until disturbed by man. It's a rare schoolbook that talks about volcanoes belching radiation into the air, floods that overwhelm river towns, and tornadoes that lift people into oblivion. Moreover, textbooks hardly mention the promise of a bright future already on the horizon-when average life expectancy may approach 90 years, when products derived from recombinant DNA research will eliminate most viral diseases, when we will enjoy greater leisure, and materials - especially plastics - will be better, stronger, and safer. Professor London's conclusion - with which we heartily agree - is that we should help our children think for themselves and reach balanced conclusions. Let's look at their textbooks, not to censor them but to raise questions. Let's give them different points of view and help discuss them. That way we can educate a new generation of citizens who aren't scared by science, and who won't be swayed by old mythologies. Our youngsters do have a future. We, and the schools, should help them look forward to it with hope, even as they prepare to deal with its problems.

Who: Mobil
Advert: New York Times, 1984
Methane: 1644.85 ppb

Source: The New York Times