technology does not irrevocably stress certain of the life-sustaining characteristics of the biosphere.

It is quite obvious that these decisions must stem from knowledge, not from ignorance, superstition or propaganda.

Now, there is much concern today amongst specialists in the environmental sciences and a rather general feeling in the public at large that the current fad concerning the environment will pass, and that just as our concern about soil conservation in the 1930's came, blossomed, and disappeared, and Smoky the Bear became a household friend but has subsequently also essentially disappeared, that this, too, will pass away.

I would like to suggest that concern for the environment will never decline to its former state of low public concern. This is my judgment because for the first time man really is beginning to suspect that he is totally dependent upon the continued good health of the biosphere. This biosphere is an exceedingly complex system that contains literally millions of different species of organisms, many of which are not yet known, practically none of which are understood in their physlological or ecological relationships, and the interactions amongst the organisms in these systems is largely unknown.

Yet, these systems, which are essentially unknown, which are made up of many organisms which have high sensitivities to modern technology are in fact rapidly shrinking in their total acreage as man's impact on the landscape and seascape increases at an accelerating rate. In other words, the life-sustaining qualities of the biosphere are in some significant ways dependent on less intensively managed land and sea areas. These aspects of our environmental sustaining machine are being reduced to smaller and smaller blocks, that is, a real process of insularization is underway, and at an accelerating rate.

This, in itself, would be worrisome because the systems that are replacing this old time-tested, life-sustaining system are being designed for far narrower objectives, for example, to produce food, to produce places where aircraft can land, to produce harbors, to produce—you can name the thousands of different very specific manmade ecosystems and the life-sustaining characteristics of the system which is being displaced are not being built into the systems which displace them. This is an extremely important process that is underway.

So, the insularization is going on. The life-sustaining processes of these systems is being left to smaller and smaller areas. Simultaneously, man is also releasing into the biosphere a half million different compounds each year, many of which had no prior existence on this planet, DDT being an interesting example. Organisms have had no prior opportunity to develop resistances to these stresses.

Now, if we have significant parts of our life-sustaining processes restricted to shrinking islands which are also being subjected to widely diffusing, highly stable, very long-lived compounds which stress their species, this is potentially serious. The case of the persistent chlorinated hydrocarbons pesticides was such a case, and there are many other types of compounds which can stress the remaining islands. In other words, significant parts of the life-sustaining qualities of the globe are being reduced to islands, and simultaneously we are oblivious to the necessity that these be preserved in good health. We release

wide-ranging poisons which stress these remaining islands. One could scarcely design a strategy of biosphere management that is less responsible, less permeated with the essential sense of stewardship.

It is an idiotic course that we are on.

I would like to show you an example of pesticide stress on an ecosystem. On page 198 of the reprint I gave you is a diagram showing parts of a complex natural system made up of many thousands of many species. We selected a small number of the interrelationships among the organisms for study. After studying these and monitoring a few of the populations, we then subjected half of the sample areas to stress from persistent pesticides and on page 199 you see the pesticide's impact upon the system. You note that many of the boxes from page 198 are missing. Each of those boxes contained a population that was sensitive to the pesticides.

But the interesting thing is that of the remaining system, several of the components increased drastically. In other words, as one stresses these systems, you not only eliminate things, but for the remaining species you may have interfered with their normal regulatory mechanisms.

The totality of these systems is an elegantly balanced, interacting set made up of many species. The continued good health of the system is dependent upon the persistence of certain of those species which regulate or that keep certain of the populations within bounds.

Now, interestingly, in the particular system illustrated in the diagrams, one of the species increased its population by a factor of five after pesticide treatment. It was a green plant that also happened to be a parasite of pine tree root systems. No one could have predicted beforehand that that species of plant would have exhibited a population explosion as a result of insecticide treatment of the system. There was no way to determine this until the experiments were run. My point here is that with our unmonitored technology we are playing Russian roulette with the remaining islands as we displace the planet's old biospheric system.

This is especially the state of affairs for large pieces of the planet's land surfaces. We are currently engaged in doing the same thing with the Continental Shelf. You are, I am sure, familiar with the marine barrens that have resulted off the shore from New York City where the dumping of secondary disposal plant sludge from New York City has occurred. A recent study of sea bottom there indicates it is a veritable barrens, with few species present, not even the common pollution organisms are present.

The assault is most conspicuous on the terrestrial surface, but clearly present on the Continental Shelf. Now we find DDT present in the Atlantic petrel, a bird that rarely ever gets to land, and it is present in the penguins in Antarctica. No portion of the planet is totally free of the stress.

The biosphere is fragile, we do not know how it operates, and we are in the process of expanding human technology and population, insularizing the original biosphere into ever smaller pieces, and these in turn are being subjected to stresses of unmonitored scope.

We have not yet approached the brink, and it would be misleading for me to say that disaster is at hand. In my own view, it certainly

is not. However, if one projects the present rate of technology expansion for very many successive years, we will surely have approached the brink.

The point is, we need to alter or at least forecast better our present course. In a democracy, we have no alternative but to have the public involved when choices need to be made. In order to have the public effectively involved, they must understand what is probably the most complicated group of questions, subject to the greatest range of controversy of any set of issues that individuals have faced in the history of human existence. We must now consider the roles and the health of the literally millions of other species and races of creatures with which we share the planet. We don't know all of their names, we don't know their physiologies or ecologies, and we don't know how the systems they make up operate.

Now, that is the challenge. Can we in fact, in the time that we have left in which to act, get wise enough people to look far enough ahead and to adopt the fail-safe mentality in our technology which will alleviate its most stressful aspects before particular crucial species are driven over the brink of extinction.

It is quite obvious that we are already stressing a large number of species. The California condor is one of the more dramatic ones, our own peregrine falcon, the bald eagle, our national bird, all of these are under considerable stress.

These are big, glamorous species but far less conspicuous organisms stressed to extinction might hurt our biosphere far more seriously. For example one could cite essential kinds of bacteria that no one is even monitoring in terms of their good health. We have literally millions of unmonitored species, and we know nothing about their stress, these include the essential sulfur and nitrogen bacteria.

One might ask, then, if we don't know very much about our ecosystems how in the world can we teach about them? It is true that we must know a subject totally in order to teach it? Well, I would suggest that if such were a requirement we wouldn't yet have taught mathematics since we are still learning a great deal about mathematics. It has been in school curriculums from the beginning of school. It is quite obvious that one need not know all the answers before instructing the rudiments and concepts of a field of knowledge.

Is there now any activity in this general area of ecosystem curriculum development? Quite obviously there is, and I am probably being redundant in bringing an example before this subcommittee. The science curriculum improvement study, funded by NSF is one such case, and there are others. We are not totally without effort in public school curriculum development. There is also growing activity in the public media, for instance in the January 26 issue of Newsweek, there is a rather nice beginning for general public information on the ravaged environment.

The other day I received in the mail a number of copies of a comic magazine that also addressed itself to this set of issues, and as I understand the editor's intention, they hope to continue in this general vein. Thus, it would be misleading to say that the present level of activity is zero. It is not. The question is, is it adequate? Are we in fact giving this a high enough priority in view of the very important decision the public will be called upon to decide?

Let me suggest, as is often the case in stress situations, we may find that before the actual events themselves cause the damage, early perception by the more alert individuals who understand a bad course of action will trigger them to various sorts of action. As provost of Michigan State University, I frequently observe students moved to violent action by what they pereceive to be inaction by the university or society in general. The point is that our urgency relative to environmental quality questions should be directed especially to the young. Their accurate perception of the state of affairs is essential. They need to know much more about our ecosystems than they now know so that they not be persuaded that the situation is worse than it is. They certainly are entitled to be "turned off" by the inertia, the tremendous inertia that large technological countries continue to exhibit in addressing themselves to these environmental matters.

My point, then, is that we do need additional effort and energy in this direction. What should its content be? It would be presumptuous of me to pretend that I have anything remotely resembling an adequate understanding of actual curricular changes that are necessary. However, a number of years ago as the public affairs committee of the Ecological Society of America was looking at places where one might attack these educational needs, we were made aware of how difficult it is to make change in any public education system. The inertia is enormous. Public school systems have a vast number of teachers who are comfortable in their present curriculums; they don't want to see their courses displaced, and one cannot possibly add an additional course to the curriculum. In other words, for whatever is added, something must be taken out. Obviously, what we are going to need is change in existing courses, at least in the beginning.

Now, as this committee searched around for some place where this totality of man's relationships to his ecosystems could be incorporated into existing courses, one of the areas that occurred to Dr. Bormann at Yale was the public school home economics curriculum. Here, after all, was a body of knowledge, a teaching of concepts that went right to the heart of the matter, or at least could if it were redesigned in the correct way. The home economics course could teach the concepts of the home as an input-output system. Thereby each individual student could relate quantitatively and processwise to his environment in a very personal way. He could be made aware of where his foods come from, what types of agricultural lands are necessary to produce them. and why a citizen of Michigan is dependent on the citizens and the good health of south Florida ecosystems for his fresh vegetables, how he is coupled to watersheds, river and lake systems, airsheds and distant pes pest-producing areas. National issues often require local individuals to able to relate to distant situations.

Furthermore, I would suggest that any revision of the curriculum must be couched so that the student in the core city, the suburbs and on the farms all relate to it. If any of these groups fail to see their relationships to the total system it is doomed to failure. We are largely an urban population. We cannot talk about pristine mountain lakes or the sea without relating them in a very real way to the individual in the ghetto, the suburb or the farm.

Somewhere this new curriculum content has to begin with the home as an input-output system, so that watersheds, food production areas.

atmospheric purification processes, waste disposal systems can be related to each individual. He is in fact coupled to his universe, and he needs to learn that he is coupled to undisturbed portions of the biosphere which process his oxygen supply and keep the nitrogen and phosphorous cycles functioning.

I have gone on far too long here, and I apologize. I would like to insert in the record a letter that will cover a major area that I have not touched upon. I have no firsthand knowledge of current details of public school curriculum content and how one changes it. I have asked a specialist in the Michigan State University Science and Mathematics Teaching Center to read your bill and comment on it, and I will insert the remarks of Dr. Wayne Taylor.

Thank you.

(The letter follows:)

JOHN E. CANTLON,

Provost, Administration Building, Campus.

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY,
East Lansing, Mich., April 3, 1970.

DEAR DR. CANTLON: Thank you very much for the opportunity of reacting to the proposed bill on "Enviromental Quality Education." Although we have not had time for an extensive discussion, I have raised some questions with other members of the Science and Mathematics Teaching Center staff in terms of the general coverage and philosophy of the proposed bill. The following observations, then, should not be construed as representing consensus of our group since we have not had a formal meeting in which to debate the issues at length. I am indebted to the stimulating ideas presented by Professors Berkheimer, Chaffee, Enochs, and McLeod, members of the Science and Mathematics Teaching Center staff.

Certainly the topic is a timely one and the general trend in public school science teaching is toward increased emphasis on environmental quality and study of ecology. There is a real danger in adopting a hysterical approach to the complex problems being generated by our current society. I certainly am in agreement with section 2a of H.R. 14753-present curricula in science and social sciences certainly do not address themselves to an in-depth study and understanding of the problems.

There is a very real danger, in connection with section 2b, that new and improved curricula may be generated and produced but that implementation will not occur. In our experience National Science Foundation curricula produced since 1957 for both elementary and secondary schools have not been universally acceptable. There are probably a number of reasons for this lack of adoption. Among these are lack of teacher background in the curriculum materials themselves, lack of adequate facilities and equipment for implementing the programs (many such programs require special apparatus and materials that have not been commonly used in schools), lack of parallelism of goals of the curricula and goals of the schools (e.g. emphasis on abstractions and presumed college preparatory content), and in already over-crowded school programs. Needless to say, the effectiveness of any curriculum program lies in the dedication and expertise of the teacher, as well as the classroom climate developed by the teacher and the school.

One of the fundamental lessons of the massive curriculum study programs completed to date is that teachers of the material at the level for which the material is intended should be involved from the very beginning of the development of such material. Experts in content and experts in preparation of educational material must also be involved. Implementation by single districts or schools is likely to be ineffective unless adequate provision is made for adequate external supervision and evaluation.

In my opinion the materials are more likely to be used if they are designed to be incorporated into existing programs rather than developed as separate new course programs. I hasten to add that I do not imply the latter course of action is not productive; it is a problem of a higher order of magnitude. In either case it is mandatory that training programs accompany the development and dissemination of the new curriculum materials.