The New Jersey State School of Conservation has been self-supporting for most of its 20-year history, with courses and workshops for up to 10,000 teachers and students a year. Next year its budget will be $299,000. The school must return $250,000 to the State, which means a $50,000 cost to the State. For this, 10,000 teachers and students will participate in 5-day programs of environmental education. The Southern New Jersey Center for Environmental Education, set up under a title III grant, will become self-supporting next year when Federal funding ends. Incidentally, they did this 80-20, 60-40 funding formula I recommended earlier, and it was planned in the beginning that the local community would eventually take over the funding. So, we are not guessing. It has been done. It can be done. F. We should not overlook some of the long-established centers where environmental education has been carried on. May I refer again to some of the programs in Wisconsin, for example, about which Congressman Steiger asked. Many of these could be expanded with some assistance under this act. One of the tragedies of many so-called innovative environmental education programs financed under title III was the Federal funding of new programs while long-established programs struggled along on a limited budget. For example, just 2 miles down the road from the New Jersey State School of Conservation, the largest title III program in environmental education in the United States was set up with a budget of $250,000 a year. The future of this program is in grave danger when Federal funding ends this year. This kind of situation could have been avoided. by professional staffing at the U.S. Office of Education and State level, and provision for approval of projects by the State education agency. G. We should consider the establishment of an advanced center for environmental education, preferably a cooperative institute bringing together the combined resources of university, business, and community to serve the Nation's need for a quality environment. Such a center could provide: 1. Conferences on policy and practice in environmental education. 2. Seminars and institute study for leading educators and teachers. 3. Courses and seminars for curriculum planners. 4. Curriculum studies in all subject areas at all levels of education. 5. Preparation of publications to disseminate the deliberations of conferences; findings of seminars and studies; and improved instructional material as developed. 6. Assistance in the development of outdoor laboratories as integral units of school facilities across the Nation. I have also made preliminary estimates of what the program might cost. Mr. STEIGER. You attached this or am I missing page 13? Dr. BRENNAN. I left that out because I was not satisfied with it, sir. I would be happy to prepare a recommended budget, if the committee wishes. Mr. BRADEMAS. I think it would be helpful, indeed. I do happen to have your page 13 here. Are you suggesting that you would not like to have it in the record? 47-238-70-10 Dr. BRENNAN. Well, the Democrats tell me I am modest and the Republicans tell me I spent too much. Mr. STEIGER. So, you better stick with what you have then. Dr. BRENNAN. Well, the other thing is I wanted to read all of the hearings and get a little better indication of the direction in which this act is going before I can make specific recommendations. Mr. STEIGER. I ask unanimous consent that at whatever point Dr. Brennan is prepared we submit that. Mr. BRADEMAS. Without objection that would be agreed to and, indeed, I am sure all of us would be most grateful to have your judgment on this, because you will note that we don't have any specific dollar authorization in this bill and the reason, I think, and Mr. Hansen will agree, I think, is we want to hear from those of you who are going over the figure to tell us what you thought, and then we would make judgments on what we thought was feasible and realistic. (The document requested follows:) RECOMMENDED BUDGET Operations U.S. Office of Education Deputy Commissioner_ 15 EE Specialists, 10 regional, 5 in District of Columbia. 15 Secretaries at $6,000__ 50 State Department of Education EE specialists at $15,000__ 50 Secretaries at $5,000-- Subtotal Program $35,000 300,000 90,000 750,000 250,000 1, 425, 000 3,500,000 A. 10 Regional centers at $350,000. (a) Should-May be existing centers with capacity to per- (b) To serve as models for curriculum development, teacher B. 10 New centers at $200,000 for innovative program development D. Research in EE, Scope, Sequence, Teaching methods-new media E. Training: (1) Teacher, in-service-model centers 5 at $200,000. Subtotal E. 4 Government leaders: Service projects (1) to establish coop- (2) advisory centers-using resources of land manage- F. Community projects, 20 at $50,000– Adult education, pre-school-youth, community leaders. G. Media, PBC_. Subtotal Total 2,000,000 500,000 2, 000, 000 1, 000, 000 1, 000, 000 1, 000, 000 11, 000, 000 200, 000 1, 000, 000 3, 000, 000 4, 200, 000 16, 625, 000 Dr. BRENNAN. I wanted to see a little more of the testimony before I made a definite recommendation. Mr. BRADEMAS. I may say to you we have another person who is engaged in a similar enterprise for us, so we can match up your recommendations with his and see what you come up with. Dr. BRENNAN. Mine will probably be modest because I believe what we are talking about accomplishing under the act can be done for very little money. Mr. BRADEMAS. That is encouraging, if I may say, at least it is encouraging to me. I want to thank you very much for this statement; it is an extremely valuable statement, Dr. Brennan, because you zeroed in on some of the specifics. In respect of the title III ESEA projects in environmental education, are you saying that if we were to pick up the phone and call the Office of Education and say, "Whoever handles these, please come over and tell us what you have been doing," that there would be nobody at the other end of the line? Dr. BRENNAN. There was one coordinator of environmental education appointed last year on the basis of recommendations by the groups I mentioned. I don't have to say any more than that she had 110 projects on environmental education to oversee and she operated without a travel budget. Mr. BRADEMAS. That is bad. Mr. BRENNAN. That is enough said. Mr. BRADEMAS. I think it would be helpful if we had whatever information is on hand over there on the kinds of curricular materials utilized in the projects as you suggested in your testimony and I take it you are suggesting we ought to pull all of this material together so we can see what already exists? Dr. BRENNAN. Yes. I have four file cabinets full of curricular materials produced by title III Elementary and Secondary Education Act projects and they never have been collected, evaluated, edited, or disseminated. It just is a total loss as far as the curriculums in the Nation are concerned. Mr. BRADEMAS. Let me make this general observation and see if you agree. It, in part, follows a colloquy. Mr. Steiger and Dr. Weidner said. that it may well be possible under existing legislative authority that environmental education projects could be undertaken, some of the kind contemplated under this bill. On the other hand, not much has been done, and I think one of the reasons for, or one of the arguments for a separate bill of this kind is to dramatize to the country the importance of moving in this field. It is similar to our drug abuse education bill. We were told by the Administration in July, "Well, you don't need it really because we carry out drug abuse education in the schools without additional authority." We said, "Very well, what are you doing." They said, "Nothing." And I think that this is one instrument we in Congress have to try to dramatize the importance of action in a field like this. Would you quarrel with that analysis? Dr. BRENNAN. I would not at all. In fact, I would say, "Amen, amen, amen." We must have the act, first of all, because of the prestige it gives to the idea. Second, we must have some kind of coordination. If we just try to do it under existing programs, then it will get lost in the corridors of the U.S. Office of Education, which as you know has a lot of corridors, and there must be a plan spelled out which directs this office and this office and this office, and so on. In other words, what does research contribute and what does elementary and secondary bureaus contribute and what does the Children's Bureau, Vocational Education and Higher Education contribute? Somebody has to coordinate it at the top or it will never be done. Mr. BRADEMAS. I take it a corollary of what you said is if there is not some direction, as you say, then nothing is likely to happen, because the tendency is to keep on doing whatever it is you are doing now and why bother to change; is that a fair statement? Mr. BRENNAN. Exactly. Mr. BRADEMAS. You referred to this advisory committee and say you think it is a good idea. We have been told by the ecologists or by an ecologist that we ought to be sure to require that the ecologist be a member of that body and the students yesterday said we ought to be sure the students are represented; I don't denigrate either of these suggestions. Have you any comments on who must be members of such a committee for it to be effective? Mr. BRENNAN. Well, I think I would start with ecologists and kids and go from there. There are a lot of us old fellows that have been pushing around this thing for a long time unsuccessfully. We need ecologists. Of course, I don't think we should try to separate them. I am an ecologist, too, but there are ecologists who are also educators and there are some who are not. I have been working with kindergarten kids developing concepts we used to consider to be the role of fourth and fifth grade science. It can be done quite well with those kids and we don't know, well, at what age children develop concepts in environ ment. The other thing is the reason people can conserve are internal, the reason why you and I are interested in environment is the feelings we developed in our youth. They are internal, and if you don't get around to the business of conveying this to kids so they have a feeling of sympathy for environment, we can talk for the rest of our lives about developing attitudes but we would be kidding ourselves. We have to concern the kids and then they will be concerned about environment. Mr. BRADEMAS. You made the point it was a mistake to rush into teacher training, which nearly everybody has agreed upon the importance, without having good curricular materials? Dr. BRENNAN. I am almost alone on this, so don't be alarmed, but I have, as a former professor, trained teachers in environment education and they will write to me and say, "Well, my administrator won't let me do this, I can't take the class outdoors, I can't take a bus for a field trip, and there is no program. Now, I could give you an even more drastic statement. When the American Broadcasting System program came on, on something about survival, I told my daughter Patti, who is 17, she ought to hear this. She said, "Daddy, I know it is important to you, but I have a test on the geography of China tomorrow and I have to do it and this is part of my program and your environment stuff is not part of my program." We can't train teachers for a program that does not exist. It can't be done that way. We did it or tried to do it with space science after sputnik in NDEA; I am not all pro-NDEA and anti-title III, ESEA, because we did bad things in NDEA, too, and one was rushing space lessons without materials. We are doing it now with the environment. You must give a teacher materials before you can train her how to use them. Mr. BRADEMAS. What is the Pinchot Institute? Dr. BRENNAN. That was a grand design for developing a national environment education center, which did not work out. It was originally set up under a cooperative agreement between the Conservative Foundation and the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture, and closed because of logistics, difficulty in getting to the place, et cetera. Russell Train, Chairman of the Council of Environmental Advisers to the President, and former president of the Conservation Foundation, conducted a national study with people who came to the institute for conferences, and they decided that logistically it was not the place for an environmental education center and withdrew their support. As of yesterday, the institute no longer exists as an environmental education center. Mr. BRADEMAS. So, is there any such center in the country today? Dr. BRENNAN. No, there is not. Mr. BRADEMAS. Finally, I will put to you the same question as put to Dr. Schoenfeld, are there other countries of the world that have carried on environmental education in so successful a way we might learn from what they have done? Dr. BRENNAN. There are some who have done things that we could learn from. For instance, Switzerland, has made extensive use of their railroads to bring children to the environment. We had a title III project submitted in Idaho last year, I am not saying it because you are here, Congressman Hansen, but the Idaho State Department of Education Science Supervisor and Social Science Supervisor are totally committed to environment education and one of the projects they presented was for the use of the idle Pullman cars of America to bring kids around and show them the environment, so they are not just singing about "rocks and rivers, rills and tempted hills" and so forth, but going to see them. As they approached a new region, they would have teacher workshops to teach the children, or go on a field trip or whatever they wanted to do. I told you about the Venezuelan project I am going to direct under UNESCO. We are also going to develop a Latin American center for environmental education at the Simon Bolivar University in Caracas which we hope will be financed by the Ford Foundation. There are a lot of things going on we can learn from, but it you get the act passed, we will still be ahead. I urge it at the earliest time. Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Steiger? Mr. STEIGER. Dr. Brennan, I must say your testimony is about the best I have heard in a long time. Dr. BRENNAN. Thank you very much. |