When Laurie David approached the National Science Teacher’s Association (NSTA) to offer 50,000 free DVD copies of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth she was surpised by the answer: “Thanks but no thanks.” In a recent Washington Post editorial titled “Science a la Joe Camel,” David, who is one of the producers on Gore’s movie, explains that the rebuke was due to concern over that other “unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.” Any guesses about who those “targetted supporters” might be? I know, it’s getting old, but I’m sure you guessed it: ExxonMobil.
And according to David, “Exxon Mobil isn’t the only one getting in on the action. Through textbooks, classroom posters and teacher seminars, the oil industry, the coal industry and other corporate interests are exploiting shortfalls in education funding by using a small slice of their record profits to buy themselves a classroom soapbox.”
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