April 5th, 1997

ALL IS NOT AS IT SEEMS
By Jackie Giuliano

Nearly 14,000 science teachers have gathered in New Orleans during the National Science Teacher's Association 1997 conference. They are learning about teaching techniques both new and old, new educational products and services, and they are going home with millions of pounds of posters and other teaching aids.

What I have seen in the exhibit hall along the miles of exhibits and among the hundreds companies hawking their educational products has been very disturbing and reflective of so many of the inconsistences in our world. Things are not as they seem.

I am always bothered when I attend major conventions by the extreme use of resources. Millions of dollars are spent on exhibit booths and the amount of paper and plastics used is unbelievable. At this convention, which I am attending to present teacher training workshops, I have collected fifty or sixty pounds of paper myself, handouts of various types for my environmental science classes which begin next week. But more than my resource use, values are being challenged this week.

Many of the teaching aid supply houses reflect the way in which our culture has decided to learn about the world around us - that is, by using other forms of life on this planet as our test subjects. I have gone by tables of packaged fetal pigs, frogs, and all manner of life. One of the more disturbing sights was a live crayfish, the signature food of the region, in a plastic cup, suffering and waiting to die, so that a microscope TV camera company could have something to show on the live TV screen.

A company selling large tanks as fish farms had two of them set up. These six foot wide by four foot deep freshwater tanks contained fish brought in to demonstrate the recirculating pumps. One tank had just been set up and the fish were not doing well at all. One was clearly suffering and floating, struggling for breath. I told the woman who was staffing the booth and she assured me that it would be 'OK.' I checked back later. "Yes, I took care of it," she said. "It didn't look good for people to see it, so I put the fish in a bucket under the table." That's not exactly what I had in mind.

The American Anti Vivisection Society and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have a booth at the convention. They are no match for the organizations funded by the companies that sell animals for research and the equipment used to perform experiments on them. These companies selling research animals have slick books, brochures, and videos to give science teachers the tools to justify the use of animals in research to their students.

I found it interesting as I spoke with these companies how they assumed that the science teacher is on their side. And for the most part, they are right. The woman at the PETA booth said that she had rarely encountered a more hostile group as these science teachers. So much for open minded education. There is much controversy surrounding the use of animals in medical research. What ever you believe on ethical and moral grounds, there are scientific arguments disputing the effectiveness of this form of inquiry. Did you know that if guinea pigs had been used for penicillin research, we would never have had that drug? Penicillin kills guinea pigs. Things are not as they seem.

There is so much to take in here. I have not had the time to process it. The poisonous, toxics-laden Mississippi River is the focal point for the tourist trade here. I know that virtually every major chemical company in the United States has plants all along the river's banks and use the river as a toxic sewer. Cancer clusters are plentiful among the towns along the river. Yet the riverboats take their loads of tourists around the riverfront mall - as the garbage barge drifts by - apparently oblivious to the pain below them.

Science teachers are everywhere, conference name badges hanging from their necks like some ritualistic jewelry. I know that sometimes it is OK to feel overwhelmed. We cannot be expected to be able to take in all that is going on around us. Sometimes you have to let the challenges and conflicts and inconsistences just be what they are. I can't wait to get home to Los Angeles . . . Doesn't that seem odd? Things are not always what they seem.

RESOURCES

1. American Anti Vivisection Society can be seen at http://www.aavs.org/.

2. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' home page is at http://www.envirolink.org/arrs/peta/index.html.

3. Explore the toxics problem in the Mississippi through a powerful video called "We All Live Downstream." Website: http://www.videoproject.org/videoproject/we_all_live_downstream.html marketed by The Video Project http://www.videoproject.org/videoproject/index.html

4. More about the threats to the Mississippi River can be found at http://www.mrba.org/mrba/river/threats.html