Eastern Washington State College A committee will set up an Environmental Science Institute to study the problems of pollution and ecology in the region. Two projects already planned include study of the sewer system and the treatment of sewage. North Texas State University A team of student and faculty micro-biologists evaluated a unique waste disposal system established by the Campbell Soup Company at Paris, Texas. In 1964 the company leveled and terraced 500 acres of eroded, depleted cotton land on which it planted grass. Water laden with grease and tiny food fragments flows slowly over the grass, and micro-organisms in the soil devour the organic impurities so that they are not swept into the general water shed. Some 99 percent of the impurities in the soupy waste water are removed by the process, one almost as effective as complex filtration plants. As a by-product, the process fosters the growth of grass, and the system turns out far more hay than surrounding crop lands. The NSU biology team helped establish the effectiveness of the system. Bowling Green State University's (Ohio) Environmental Studies Center with a full time director, uses an interdisciplinary system which expects to draw most heavily from the disciplines of business administration, education and the liberal arts college. The Center plans a future consortium approach. Though the present scope of this work is limited, demographic and economic advantages of the surrounding growing megalopolis will provide incentive for growth. Slated primarily as a service capability for the community rather than as a study center, the Center aims to identify basic ecological problems and deal with their fundamental causes. Main emphasis will focus on pollution control and land utilization. California State Polytechnic College at Pomona, using a decentralized approach, is planning to work in environmental design, the biological sciences and water resources management through the college's various departments. Located in an area with diverse natural conditions, their on-campus facility which can stimulate mechanically different types of climate is most useful. Fresno State College provides instruction through its center of operations at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. The program was initiated through cooperative action by five California State Colleges-Fresno, Hayward, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose. The center specialized in instruction and research in marine environment. It emphasizes field study executed and documented by students with independent research projects planned, and is open to upper division undergraduates and graduates. Louisiana Polytechnic Institute's location provides opportunity for regionoriented research such as pollution due to extensive papermill manufacturing in the immediate vicinity. The Water Resources Center plans to expand its areas of education, research and public services, and to study and interpret developments in water resources. The program is open to undergraduates and to post and predoctoral for supplementary training. McNeese State College (La.) has an Environmental Science Program which operates in a fertile region for concerted research studies. Natural resources and the area's petrochemical complex present a broad scope. Purpose of the program is to train sanitarians. Degree: undergraduate. State University College at Oswego (N.Y.) enjoys easy access to lake areas conducive to environmental and weather modification studies. The laboratory program stresses the effects of Lake Ontario upon the surrounding area and vice versa. Open to undergraduate and graduate students. State University College at Fredonia (N.Y.) is located in an area relatively free of contamination and pollution. The Lake Erie Environmental Studies Program researches the other Great Lakes, as well, and provides continuous monitoring of meteorological information and water quality. Open to undergraduates, graduates and post-doctorals. Winona State College (Minn.) is located on the least polluted portion of the "greatest river system in the world." Its program encourages river research in line with its initial purpose of establishing and maintaining a Mississippi River research facility. Open to undergraduate and graduate students. Wisconsin State University at River Falls uses its region to study problems related to maintaining quality environment in growing urban areas associated with modern agriculture. A scientific land management curriculum stresses environmental management, exposure to different resources, facilities and disciplines in natural resources. Purpose: to strengthen environmental quality control and land use planning. Open to undergraduate students. Shippensburg State College (Pa.) President Gilmore B. Seavers has given the Director of Safety and Security the additional responsibility of serving as "environmental ombudsman." A telephone number is available for anyone on campus who wishes to make a suggestion or report a "violation" of the environment. These calls are taken by the ombudsman, with an electronic recording device putting service on a 24-hour basis. Lamar State College of Technology (Texas) has a new program in oceanography which is being conducted by the science and engineering departments with participation by the Texas A&M University department of oceanography. All specialized courses are scheduled for the last two years, so that second-year students and junior college transfers can enter the program with no loss of time or credit. Lake Superior State College President Kenneth J. Shouldice has announced a new two-year program in the management of natural resources to begin next Fall. The program, funded by a $39,000 Kellogg Foundation grant, will lead to an associate degree in natural resources management technology. Hon. JOHN BRADEMAS, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS, Chairman, Select Subcommittee on Education, New York, N.Y., January 19, 1970. DEAR CONGRESSMAN BRADEMAS: Your January 9 invitation to comment on the proposed Environmental Quality Education Act (H.R. 14753) is most welcome, and I hope that you will find these views to be both constructive and helpful to you and your colleagues. Before discussing the bill itself, I would like to offer a word of caution with regard to the manner in which we should develop public concern with the quality of our environment. In some respects this has already been carried to extremes by certain well-intentioned conservationists, some publicity-seeking opportunists, and even a few politicians in their zeal to champion popular causes. As a result, there have been many irresponsible scarehead statements and omens of doom that have brought emotional reactions bordering upon hysteria from some segments of the public. This emotional reaction is highly inhibitive to the programs and projects that are needed to improve environmental quality. It is interfering seriously with our rational analysis and approach to specific problems, and will cause increasing delay and waste of money and resources in bringing about their solution. Particularly unfortunate is the tendency to impose unrealistic standards and unduly burdensome controls as the result of ill-founded public pressure. Our standards of environmental quality must be realistic and achievable within our technological and economic capacity. This does not mean that these standards cannot be raised in the future, of course, as we become able to meet them. They should be dynamic. It is respectfully urged, therefore, that you base your environmental education program on the premise that our present environmental problems have arisen from an advancing technology in the service of a burgeoning population, and that this same technology has solved many of these problems, it is now solving others, and will continue to solve those of the future. Public confidence and support of such efforts is vital, but irrational public pressures only add new dimensions to the complexity of these problems. With regard to the bill, I heartily endorse the statement of need for the legislation as set forth in Section 2(a). In its purpose, however, I respectfully urge that primacy be given to public information and education in the broad sense rather than to formal education through academic curricula and teaching. My reasons follow: 1. The need for adult education is immediate so that the public will support environmental programs that are needed today. We must educate the spectrum between the casual litterbug and the industrialist who conceives such atrocities as undisposable packages. We need to reach the individual householder as well as the real estate developer and mass housing entrepreneur. We need to engender the support of the taxpayer and consumer who must pay for the control of air, water and land pollution as well as the municipal and industrial officials who make the key decisions in these matters. 2. The inculcation of environmental awareness in our children and youth is very important as a long range goal, but I am not at all sure that it can be taught like arithmetic or chemistry. It seems to me that this is more a matter of training and general character development in the youngster. Such training will be enhanced if parents and teachers are strongly conscious of environmental quality. The provisions in the bill for training of teachers are very good, and could be given even greater emphasis. Concern and appreciation for environmental quality should be woven through the entire fabric of the elementary and high school educational experience. I do not, however, consider special environmental curricula or courses to be practical. Special non-academic programs for reaching children could be extremely effective, and should be covered in the bill. I refer here to such media as the comic book and the animated cartoon on television. These are powerful tools. I am not enthusiastic about the proposed use of funds as set forth in Sections 3(a), paragraphs (1) and (2) of the bill. I subscribe strongly, however, to the uses of funds proposed in Section 3(a), paragraphs (3), (4) and (5). The Advisory Committee on Environmental Quality Education proposed in Section 5 of the bill could serve a highly worthwhile function, and I would endorse this provision. It is respectfully urged, however, that the membership of the Committee, as prescribed in Section 5(b), include one or more environmental design professionals with actual problem-solving background. This will afford insurance against the scaremonger syndrome on which I have cautioned at the beginning of this letter. Thank you again for the opportunity to express these views. I am intensely interested in bringing about the understanding, rapport and cooperation that is so sorely needed between the public and the civil engineer as a “professional environmentalist." Your legislation is certainly a significant proposal toward that end. Sincerely, WILLIAM H. WISELY, MANAGING KNOWLEDGE TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT (By McGeorge Bundy, a Ford Foundation Report) There is a characteristic impulse in our society Senator Gaylord Nelson, in introducing the Education, I believe, is the only proper way to in- A number of questions ought to be asked ucation are based are of questionable utility, and that we have not yet come to grips with the underlying basis of the environmental problems which face us. The values which affect society's behavior toward the environment are fundamental, widely held, and deeply involved with our perceptions of the world around us. For instance, as a society we attach an almost mystical importance to the inevitability of progress and to the value of economic growth. So much so that we seldom examine these ideas, even though they are by no means shared by other people around the world or even by all segments of our own society. Progress, of course, is not inevitable, and growth, whether in human population or in gross national product, has finite limits. The fact that we continue to behave as though this were an infinite world, even though we clearly know better, leads us to some pretty grim conclusions about the future of our society. While one may disagree with the doomsday prophets predicting ecological disaster in this century, the trend is clear enough.* Schools and Values. If our behavior toward the environment is indeed based on unexamined values and faulty assumptions, then it should be the business of education to examine these values and challenge the assumptions. While this idea sounds revolutionary, nothing less direct will stand a chance of being effective in changing social behavior. After all, our assumptions about the nature of the world and our role in it are widely held in society because they are constantly reinforced. The communications media, the behavior of our peers, and even our folk culture *For a particularly enlighting treatise on this subject see Garret Hardin's article, "The Tragedy of the Commons" in Science, Vol. 162 (December 13, 1968). confirm our perceptions of the world. Examination of these perceptions must start with our schools since they also tend to reinforce whatever values are widely held by society at any given time. Indeed, they are one of the means by which we institutionalize our beliefs and transmit them to succeeding generations. Much of this communication is done through implicit messages which are a part of the school environment and may or may not be contained in textbooks or other teaching materials. For instance, one of the most important messages from the point of view of environmental significance has to do with the child's perception of his role in society and of his ability to affect his environment, either for better or for worse. This is a particularly critical question in urban poverty areas where the effectiveness of the individual is so much in question. We can assume that a teacher who comes from a different cultural background and lives in a different neighborhood will not share the same environmental perceptions and concerns as his children. If, at the same time, that teacher has a low estimation of the ability of his children to relate to the broader social community in coping with their problems, a message of futility and isolation comes through to those children all too clearly. Students in more privileged suburban schools may receive different messages but ones which also have unfavorable implications for their values and behavior in relation to their environment. I would guess that it is an unusual classroom in which students are encouraged by either practice or example to examine critically that which is bad in their environment or to question at all the assumptions and values which underlie environmental deterioration. In general, we do not seem to give children a very high estimation of their ability to effect change or even to do more than passively cope with the environmental insults which our society has prepared for them. |