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try. The Federal contribution, I think, can best be the development of the innovative kinds of efforts that would be a supplement to and a help to the kind of program carried on here. If it is purely a matter of Federal funds, then I think you can make a pretty good argument that those funds coming from the same taxpayers really ought to come as part of the regular school program. It is really a matter of priorities, of deciding that this is sufficiently important that we ought to do this with limited funds.

Mrs. REID. I understand, now, what you are saying, but I don't think I agree with it. We look to the Federal Government for leadership in pushing this kind of program through. In other words, I don't think we can leave it to each individual school and each individual district, to come to this kind of thing on their own. We look to the Government, to the Federal Government, for the impetus to get this kind of thing started and I think your Environmental Quality Education Act offers that idea, that this does have priority in the country, that our Federal Government is concerned with something more than Cambodia and the moon, that they are also concerned about the environment and that they are going to stand behind doing something about it, just as it filtered down to us so that we were teaching space science in 1958 after the Russian Sputnik in 1957. I think that the schools need the Federal Government's leadership and I think that you should provide it.

Mr. HANSEN. Provide the bulk of the funds for this kind of program, would you say?

Mrs. REID. Not just the funds but the leadership and the impetus for the whole program, lending your support and your knowledge and your leadership, through different agencies.

Mr. HANSEN. Does it not really still depend, in the final analysis, on people being sufficiently concerned and that concern being reflected through their school boards, through their State legislatures, through their State and local public officials, to decide that this kind of program should be assigned a very high priority, should be assigned funds from the regular sources, in order to carry it on?

Mrs. REID. Well, yes, but I don't know who starts what. Yes, the public should become concerned enough to insist that this be done and, yes, it has to be done in order to make the public concerned enough. In other words, you are working in a circular situation where the concern of the public will bring this about and bringing this about will increase the concern of the public.

Mr. REID. I think, if I may interject here

Mr. HANSEN. Yes.

Mr. REID. I think that one of the things that the Federal Government can do to help this is to assign in its own division of Federal funds, the priorities necessary to do something about our environmental problem. In other words, you are not setting a good example in Congress when you talk about the environment and the environmental problems and assign such a miniscule amount of Federal funds to it and, for example, support SST which almost every known authority thinks is a ridiculous boondoggle-at least, I do-and I think there is a tremendous support for this opinion and to support that and say that, "We are going to go ahead with the SST program," and at the same time assign much smaller amounts to environmental education

is the kind of leadership that permits local people to say, "Well, we're paying enough taxes for what we've got now and if we've got to pay more taxes to get environment education, to heck with it." So I think that in this sense, the Federal Government has a good opportunity to provide leadership in its own division of the pie, so to speak, and when it begins to devote the majority of its efforts along these lines rather than in the other lines, I think that they will set such an example to the public that it in itself will be part of the education of people to change their attitudes toward our environment.

Mr. HANSEN. I would certainly agree that leadership is the one area where the Federal Government can serve an essential purpose. Our attempt here is to try to identify the kinds of thing with the limited resources that will be available for this or any other worthwhile program, can best be used in order to point the direction in order to create the opportunities within which there can be creative and innovative progress in the development, as Professor Mohr said, of the hard facts, in the development of pilot programs, in creating the conditions within which the concerns that should be stimulated then will produce the comprehensive program such as this.

Mr. REID. Well, those of you who are in Congress who recognize this importance should appeal to the people, should appeal and point out what you are doing, for example, with these appropriations for the Corps of Engineers as opposed to what you are doing in this field, for example, and I think that you can perform a tremendous service to the American citizenry as a whole by saying whatever has happened has happened but now, we are faced with a crisis and we simply can't afford both and we simply that is the part of the leadership, financially, that I think you need to provide. Possibly, if you take the lead in that, then we might not have so much of a problem in passing our school bonds and our overrides and so forth and so on.

Mr. HANSEN. Let me conclude by thanking you for your leadership in the area. It has been most helpful.

Mr. BRADEMAS. I might observe, Mrs. Reid, that apparently the Los Angeles city school system did not put high enough priority on the inservice training programs that you were describing, to continue financially supporting them. I think that is most unfortunate. The same point could be made with respect to the failure of the State government of California to fund your conservation education program, to which failure we made reference earlier. We, in Congress. are guilty of the same shortcoming and I guess that is what politics is all about: fighting to get programs funded. I happen to be one of those who thoroughly agrees with you that the SST is absurd and ridiculous. an anomalous way to waste taxpayers' dollars to get to Paris an hour earlier. We do not even have enough airports in this country now to be able to land on time the airplanes we already have.

I was also impressed by the statement dated May 2, 1970, by the Los Angeles chapter of the Sierra Club in support of legislation leading to educational programs to preserve our environment and I would ask your unanimous consent that the statement be inserted in the record. It seems to me that, taken as a whole, it is an excellent statement of the overall purpose of the legislation that we have been here been here considering.

(The statement referred to follows:)

A STATEMENT BY THE ANGELES CHAPTER OF THE SIERRA CLUB IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATION LEADING TO EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS TO PRESERVE OUR ENVIRONMENT

The quality of our environment is of great concern to school children and adults alike and increasing numbers are becoming aware of the need for environmental education in the educational programs of our public schools and our communities. Environmental education has been defined by the Conservation Education Advisory Committee to the California State Department of Education as developing in each student "a healthy attitude of personal responsibility toward his environment and its resources, and providing him with concepts, the knowledge and skills needed to contribute validity to the decisionmaking process on issues involving the environment and its resources." Development of such an attitude is prerequisite to solving (in the long-run) those ecological problems which threaten the very survival of the human race.

A well-trained teacher is the key to a successful environmental education program. To be well-trained a teacher must be instructed in the philosophical, scientific, technological, and social aspects of environmental problems. In addition a teacher must be given instruction in the specifics of teaching environmental matters at his particular grade level and subject area. Such instruction is not generally provided in undergraduate programs at present and most of the teachers now teaching lack these skills, knowledge, and attitudes.

If the environmental education program is to be successful, well-trained teachers must have good classroom teaching materials such as high quality textbooks, supplementary books, film strips, picture sets and motion pictures. Such materials are not presently available in adequate supply in most schools. Additionally, local school districts and county offices need materials and guides to assist them in planning programs suited to local needs. The production of such materials is often beyond the resources of local school districts and county offices. Finally, development of environmental education curricula and materials can best be evaluated by environmental specialists with the appropriate technical background.

Private conservation agencies and governmental resource agencies can make many valuable contributions to the environmental education effort and are, for the most part, anxious and willing to be a part of this important work. Printed materials, films, speakers, technical information, field trips, and other services are available from these sources. These agencies are currently under extreme pressure to provide these services, pressure which is severely straining their limited

resources.

In consideration of the overall requirements for environmental education, the Executive Committee of the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club urges the federal and state governments to develop a far-reaching and adequately funded environmental education program, which includes or provides for the following aspects:

(1) Development and institution of both preservice and inservice training programs for teachers in the philosophy, principles, and content of environ.. mental education, It must be stressed that such training should include explicit emphasis on the following necessary preconditions of achieving ecological balance: the need for a new sense of restraint in our consumption of natural resources and a responsible sense of limitation regarding population and economic growth. These specific goals should be written into the enabling legislation.

(2) Development of environmental education courses for elementary, secondary, college, and adult education programs.

(3) Development of an environmental education outline listing essential concepts, and showing possible curricular applications in many subject areas and grade levels. Environmental education should be carried on in many subject areas on many occasions.

(4) Support of the development of improved textbooks in the environmental area and of the development of requirements for strong emphasis on environmental matters where appropriate in a wide variety of textbooks in many subject areas; encouragement of the production of worthwhile environmental education materials in many subject areas as well.

(5) Close cooperation with conservation organizations and other local resource agencies and provisions of technical assistance for their environmental education programs, including development of materials, provision of speakers, etc.

(6) Initiation of pilot demonstration projects to test new curricula and provisions for the evaluation of the effect of these projects and the dissemination of significant results and curriculum materials for widespread use.

(7) Enabling legislation should explicitly provide for administration by an Advisory Committee principally composed of environmental specialists and representatives of the public at large who have demonstrated interest in preservation of the environment. Membership of the Committee should also include some representation by specialists in education.

Mr. BRADEMAS. The Chair wants to reiterate his appreciation to our colleague, Congressman Bell, for having made arrangements for us to conduct these hearings in the district that he so ably represents and, indeed, to express appreciation to all of the witnesses who have appeared before our subcommittee, in San Francisco yesterday and here today in Los Angeles.

This is our last day of hearings on the Environmental Quality Education Act and the Chair hopes very much that with the support of members of this subcommittee and other Members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, we shall succeed in writing into law a bill which I hope will not only be valuable in stimulating education about the environment but will also symbolize what I think all of us hope is a deepened sense of the profound importance of the environment to the future of our country and of mankind.

We are adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 2:49 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned.)

APPENDIX

TESTIMONY OF HON. DAVID R. OBEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WISCONSIN

Mr. CHAIRMAN. I would like to indicate my strong support for HR 15822 and identical legislation-of which I am a co-author-which authorizes the U.S. Commissioner of Education to establish educational programs encouraging the understanding of policies and activities which enhance environmental quality.

This legislation, commonly known as the Environmental Quality Education Act, would provide federal funds for teaching about natural resources, conservation, pollution control, and the need to maintain a balanced ecology. It would provide grants to colleges and universities for developing teaching materials, for teacher training, for pilot projects and for the support of environmental education both in schools and community programs.

Certainly cities clouded by air pollution, lakes polluted and aging, wildlife threatened by pesticides and shorelines damaged by oil spills or haphazard development all point to the fact that we are in a race to save our environment, and it is in a sense a race between education and catastrophe.

As the noted ecologist Barry Commoner has pointed out, "we are unwitting victims of environmental pollution, for most of the technological affronts to the environment were made, not out of greed, but ignorance.'

The fact remains that there is a serious gap in our knowledge of the environment and certainly in our ability to inform those in our schools about the beautiful but fragile balance of nature which must be preserved and protected.

If we do not recognize that man is rapidly altering his environment on a massive scale, we may be facing the catastrophe which the cave man was able to avert-an ability to live on the planet we now occupy.

Man has not always been able to overcome his own abuse of his environment. A recent article in the New York Times pointed out, for example, that 1300 years ago one of the great civilizations atop Monte Alban in Southern Mexico went into a catastrophic decline because it had inadvertently destroyed its own environment. Although the evidence is meager, it is believed that through deforestation and single-crop agriculture the inhabitants degraded the land until it could no longer support the great metropolis on and around Monte Alban.

But ignorance of the ways our actions may adversely affect the environment still plagues us today.

A recent meeting of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration and the American Petroleum Institute revealed, for example, that attempts which have been made to control oil spills with chemical dispersants may actually be causing more harm than the oil itself, and may be doing long-term and severe ecological damage. The FWPCA found that oil, when mixed with these chemicals, caused the mixture to sink into the sand at depths three times the depth of the untreated oil. And in the Torrey Canyon oil spill, in which a supertanker struck a reef off the southern coast of England sending 30 million gallons of crude oil oozing toward shore, more animal life was killed by chemicals than by the oil itself.

Why, we should ask, has man allowed himself to corrupt our waterways, eliminate our wildlife and forestlands, snarl our cities, and foul our air.

The answer is best given in a recent statement by Dr. Elvis Stahr, the President of the National Audubon Society. Dr. Stahr said we have allowed ourselves to slip into this situation because "there persist tragic inadequacies in man's understanding of nature, of his own relations to it, and what he must do about them and how." He went on to say further that "many who ostensibly are well educated do not understand why it is happening, and far too few are as yet committed to finding and spreading the necessary knowledge and acting upon it while there may yet be time."

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