sponse to Mr. Steiger's questions that you feel you have learned something about teacher training in this field, but you don't have the resources to carry out this effort for all of the schoolteachers in the country. But we might learn something about teacher training from you. (The information requested follows:) Hon. JOHN BRADEMAS, Chairman, Select Subcommittee on Education, NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY, DEAR MR. BRADEMAS: I am happy to respond on Dr. Elvis Stahr's behalf to the request for further information on Audubon Camps and the cost of Nature Centers which you made in the course of the environmental education hearings before your Select Subcommittee on Education on April 9. Our Educational Service Department informs me that a total of 18,817 campers have attended our Audubon Camps since the opening of the first one in Maine in 1936. Of this number, our records show that 7,978 or some 42.4% of the participants have been teachers. Based on the assumption that each teacher will have taught an average of 35 students a year, we estimate that in all they have influenced 280,000 students over the years. As a sample of the teacher's reaction to their experience at our Audubon Camps, I am enclosing statements of six camp graduates testifying to the value of the program and to its influence on their teaching. With regard to your question as to the costs which would be involved in a federally supported program of community nature center development, since capital outlay monies generally can be found locally, we feel that the real need is for funds to aid with planning and with initial operating costs for the first three years. After the value to a community of a nature center has been demonstrated through several years of operation, it has been our experience that local funds become available to cover further operating costs. Although costs vary from project to project, it is our opinion that a planning grant of $6,000 and an initial operating grant of $30,000 ($10,000 a year for three years) for each project would be sufficient. Thus with an estimated planning and initial operating costs of $36,000 for each qualifying project, a federal program for the development of fifty new nature centers a year would require an annual budget of only $1,800,000. Planning funds 50 nature centers at $6,000 each, project planning- 50 new nature centers with $30,000 operating funds each ($10,00 a year for 3 years in each case) – Annual total____. $300,000 1, 500, 000 1, 800, 000 From our long experience with the value of nature centers we feel that even such a modest program would yield tremendously valuable results in terms of national environmental awareness. I hope that this information will prove helpful to you and that you will call upon us again if you should require any additional material. Sincerely, CHAPLIN B. BARNES, Administrative Assistant to the President. Bob Bleiweiss, 6th grade teacher, P.S. 70, Bronx GO (General Organization), classroom teacher: "Everything I learned in the Greenwich Workshop has been of help. I reach 400 to 500 children weekly, partly through seminars in which they can ask conservationists answers to problems in the environment. The children have followed up with a poster campaign in which schools, neighborhood stores and the PTA have cooperated." Christine Popowicz, 2nd grade teacher, P.S. 148, Queens: "For the first time in my life I felt really close to nature. Since then I've been stressing the interre lationships between man and nature the total picture, not just man. I was able to make the alligator crisis clear to my class." Freda Hoffman, P.S. 79, Queens, Elementary school science teacher: "In my work I often automatically think of the Audubon Society. That week (in Greenwich) was more than just exciting; now I know what's "out there”; I feel secure with nature. The biggest help was learning how to get it across to my classes. The Audubon materials are a wonderful help. I am part of an in-service course on the use of community resources and participate in teacher training." Margaret O'Brien, P.S. 111, Queens, School science teacher: "When I graduated from college I felt competent to teach natural science. My week at Greenwich made me realize I was dragging in all the textbooks instead of inspiring anybody. The naturalists made me aware of so many things I was missing . . . I felt stimulated, enriched. I saw things with new eyes. This is something I can pass on to my classes." Sam Bels, District Science Coordinator, District Science, Manhattan: "At present I am concentrating on a district-wide implementation of class room learnings; Ward's Island (New York City) is an excellent laboratory for field work in ecology. We reach about 3500 children a year through 200 to 300 teachers; the interrelationships between man and his environment are stressed. I had a science background before attending the Greenwich Workshop but that week started me in this direction." Mildred Becker, Naturalist, High Rock Nature Conservation Center, Staten Island: "I had always been deeply interested in nature but didn't see how to consolidate my interests in a methodical form that could be used professionally. My week in Greenwich was the start of a new career, a new way of life. Everything came into focus and I learned how to convey ideas to the children. to make them aware." Mrs. Joan Rosner, District Science Coordinator, Project Director of District 23, Natural Science Workshop: "One direct result of my first summer at the Greenwich Workshop as A Discovery Walk in Natural Science, made with the cooperation of the Office of Science Education and the American Museum of Natural History. This film-strip is used by schools all over the city. In Queens. our active Arbor Day programs have helped develop the local Botanical Gardens arboretum; to date 122 trees have been planted by children. Our Children's Natural Science Workshop is an interpretive center to which children from 12 schools come for workshops and field trips, much as they do in Greenwich. Our staff, all of them Audubon Workshop graduates, reach over 2000 children and 75 teachers. I initiated and coordinate 6-day summer workshops for the teachers and supervisors of two districts; the program was inspired by the one in Greenwich, and is patterned after it, but differs in taking the whole family." Mr. BRADEMAS. I wonder if I could ask you just two quick questions, Dr. Stahr. You may want to comment of this. How do you sensitize the urban child to the environmental situation? Here, I suppose my question suggests the more traditional outdoors-nature-conservation orientation. Dr. STAHR. Well, if you wait until you can do that, you may have waited much too long, although it certainly would be desirable to get them out into a different environment when you can. But it is a colossal undertaking. The way you really sensitize them is to try to do it in the environment where they are. At least that is the additional thing that scarcely is being done. There is a little of the other in some cities, where they do take the children out of the city or to a place in the city which is more or less natural, which we have referred to as "nature centers," and give them some experience and some teaching there. But the very thing I mentioned that we have been working on with those New York City teachers, most of whom teach in the ghettos, and have firsthand experience with the problem, this sort of thing we are going to have to have a lot more of in this country if we are going to have any sort of appreciation of the environment by a very large percentage of the next generation. Mr. BRADEMAS. I wanted to congratulate you, Dr. Stahr, and the Audubon Society on the materials collected here as part of the ecology study program. Just glancing at them, they appear to be very well done, indeed. My final question is this. Dr. Mead yesterday suggested the value of establishing a program for allowing so-called mini grants with simplified grant forms to make it possible for applications from a community or neighborhood levels to be submitted for support for some of our studies projects. Does anybody want to give me a reaction to that suggestion? Dr. STAHR. It is a fascinating idea. One of the greatest problems with most grant programs, whether by government agencies or great foundations, has been that they are just not geared up to make anything but big grants. And there are so many very useful small things that never get done because there isn't a little bit of money available. Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Clapper? Mr. CLAPPER. I would make one brief comment about this. You might inquire from the Conservation Foundation, another one of our groups, about the experience it has had with so-called seed-money grants that they have made under, I think, at least partially with support from the Ford Foundation. They have made several grants in the neighborhood of $2,000 to different communities to explore a particular problem with respect to the effect of a highway upon a natural area, or something of this sort. And I think experience from that organization might be useful. Mr. DUSTIN. Mr. Chairman, I would like to suggest that there is a place for the private sector to participate in this. And I think I like the idea of mini grants. But I wonder if I might suggest an offer on a matching basis of some kind. In Indiana we have a small endowment corporation with assets of less than $4,000, and yet we would like to participate and provide some funds for the holding of these workshops for educational purposes. While I think we need the main thrust of this bill, we would like also to preserve the opportunity for private services to be rendered and private funds to be used, instead of at every point turning for a grant large and small. Mr. BRADEMAS. I want to express my appreciation and that of the members of the subcommittee to all of you for your testimony today. It has been enormously helpful to us, as I think you can judge from our questions. I believe that Dr. Stahr has a film that he would like to show, and I would be glad to do that, and have those of you here in the hearing room today remain. It is a rather brief film. Dr. STAHR. I haven't seen the film "Islands of Green" but I have faith that it is worth seeing because my colleagues assure me of it. Mr. BRADEMAS. Our hearings this morning are adjourned, and we will take a look at the film. (Whereupon at 12:10 p.m. the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene at 9:30 a.m. on Friday, April 10, 1970.) 47-238-70- -19 ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY EDUCATION ACT FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 1970 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 9:30 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 2261, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Brademas (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Brademas, Steiger, and Meeds. Staff members present: Jack G. Duncan, counsel, Ronald L. Katz, assistant staff director; Arlene Horowitz, staff assistant; Toni Immerman, clerk; Maureen Orth, consultant, Marty LaVor, minority legislative coordinator. Mr. BRADEMAS. The subcommittee will come to order for further consideration of H.R. 14753, the Environmenal Quality Education Act and related bills. Congressman Galifianakis was to have been our first witness but had to leave unexpectedly. We will ask unanimous consent to insert his statement at this point in the record. (The statement referred to follows:) STATEMENT OF HON. NICK GALIFIANAKIS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, FOURTH DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA Mr. Chairman, I am most appreciate of the opportunity to add my voice to those advocating improved and intensified environmental education without delay. I know you have heard extensive testimony emphasizing the great need for more and better programs in environmental education at all levels of the school system. In reviewing the provisions of the Environmental Quality Education Act, I concur with its recognition of the problems we now have: 1. a lack of accurate knowledge of the factors which control our environment, and of the ways in which they must be safeguarded to prevent deterioration, and permanent damage; 2. a lack of accurate knowledge of the technology and methods with which an over-exploited and contaminated environment can be brought back to full use and productivity; 3. a lack of understanding of the magnitude of the task to maintain a viable and healthy environment from generation to generation. I think we are agreed that accurate, concise knowledge of all aspects of environmental management, preservation and utilization must be made available to our children-who have already expressed a keen interest in the subject-and that this teaching must begin as soon as possible. I believe that the priorities to be followed in acquiring the necessary tools for this purpose are these: 1. The training of teachers who will have the knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the many facets comprising man's environment, and the enthusiasm to import it to their students. A new wave of youngsters begins school every year, and each year new enthusiasm must be summoned to kindle their interest in environmental quality. The present way of encouraging nature studies and some aspects of conservation practiced by all too many of our school systems falls far short of preparing our children for the task of preserving the world! |