Ari Kaufman: Educational Indoctrination, "Environmental Style"

Educational Indoctrination, "Environmental Style"

Ari Kaufman

January 21, 2006

Late last year, I penned many pieces for newspapers and webzines about my perils as a public school educator in Los Angeles. The articles' focuses were on the discontinuity between the "real world" and the world of teachers. After perusing these essay, many teachers had various criticisms of my views on education, from performance-based pay to tenure to union influence. However, I never delved into the other half of the reasoning for my early exodus from my time as a teacher.

During my ephemeral teaching career in Los Angeles, there were numerous troubling examples of educational ludicrousness and lunacy. Of all the examples, the environmental "indoctrination" of my students was the most disconcerting. Doubtlessly, California schools' obsession with the environment is incomparable with most other states, but the anecdotal evidence I mentally compiled is striking.

It wasn't only that the students were regularly pulled from my class at inopportune times to have the same information ingrained into their ten year-old minds, but rather, that the messages a high percentage of these groups pontificated were that human-beings are inherently bad people, animal killers, and are ruining our once-beautiful earth.

Consider the presentation made by a college theater group from UCLA. Showing no interest in a balanced engagement with the issues, the group instead staged a 20-minute play whose theme can be summarized thusly and unfortunately: Once upon a time, the Earth was beautiful. Then humans came and destroyed it. To appreciate the effect of such simplistic narratives on students, consider the reaction of a confused little girl in my classroom. Visibly upset, she approached me after the play to ask: “Are we really ruining the Earth”? I did my best to explain, as objectively as possible, that the reality was a bit more complicated that the play would have her believe. But this had little effect.

In case the numerous assemblies by theatre groups and yoga instructors proved inadequate to steeping the kids in environmentalist dogma, there were also field trips designed to achieve the same end. One that will always stand out was the "school journey" ("field trip" is no longer used in education) of choice for most teachers, called “Ocean Day. Organized by the Malibu Foundation, a non-profit group whose declared mission is “creating conservationists” out of school children, it was annual day set aside for environmental activism, or as it is euphemistically called, “in-school environmental education.”

Since the LAUSD claimed to have such a paltry budget, this venture was my class's only trip each year. Thus, even though I quickly deduced it would be a typically LA "save the earth" venture, I cared about the children's enjoyment, so I obliged. Interspersed between full day rehearsals for the "International Dance Festival" and preparations for state testing, my grade level journeyed off to the beach for "Ocean Day."

After about 25 minutes of searching the pristine beach for trash that was non-existent, the kids took off their protective gloves, ate lunch, stared at the water ("Look but don't touch" was the rule), and then along with over 5,000 other LAUSD students, we spent an hour getting organized for a fly-over shot by a few news stations, which was undoubtedly be fawned over for many nights.

The amazingly outrageous part was that the beach was unbelievably clean; however, because we were apparently trying to indoctrinate the youths that beaches are filthy places where animals go to die (hence, the photo we created was a dying fish on oxygen), the kids could not dare go in that water. Nor were we allowed to play catch, wear sandals nor shorts. Most high school kids donned school uniforms.

The overall point of the annual trip was, ostensibly, to clean up trash on California beaches. Their work done, the children would then pose for the aforementioned photographs conveying the message of the trip. On this occasion, they were asked to line up in the outline of the fish with an oxygen mask while an aerial photograph was taken. My heartfelt attempts to recommend a more educational venue for a field trip – for instance, the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles – were often met with indifference from school administrators. My fellow teachers were even less open to the idea, offering little assistance. Once, when I questioned the wisdom of ferrying the kids to spend yet another day picking up trash and reciting environmentalist slogans, two teachers rudely dismissed my objections.

While living in Los Angeles and in other areas of this nation, I have visited beaches quite often, and this "troubled" beach looked just as serene, and the water looked just as lucid as Malibu, New Jersey, or Florida. It was clear that, especially in Los Angeles, education had certain ulterior motives.

And that, along with myriad other examples, served as the foundation for my discouraging experiences as a schoolteacher. Aside from the abundance of job perks that teachers disregard in order to express displeasure, when you factor in the true "politics" of education, I slowly sensed throughout my tenure, that education was "far removed" from the occupation in which I once envisioned a long, happy career.

A public schoolteacher in Los Angeles for three years, Ari Kaufman is now a freelance journalist, contributing sports, socio-educational, travel and political commentaries to various media. He is also the author of an upcoming book on his educational experiences.