An Inconvenient DVD - more on NSTA and Laurie David

[proud2BlibKansan]

By Jeffrey Mervis
ScienceNOW Daily News
30 November 2006

An offer to distribute Al Gore's movie about the threat of global warming has put the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) on the hot seat.

Producer and environmental activist Laurie David—wife of comedian Larry David—assumed that NSTA would be all too happy to send its members free copies of An Inconvenient Truth, the climate change tutorial by the former vice president that was a surprise hit at the box office. All NSTA had to do was write a cover letter. But NSTA declined the offer, citing a 2001 policy prohibiting endorsements of any product or message by an outside organization.

That's when things heated up. In a sharply worded op-ed in the 26 November Washington Post, David accused NSTA of rejecting her offer of 50,000 DVDs so as not to offend ExxonMobil, which has given NSTA $6 million over the past decade to help it promote science education. Although the money has paid for such motherhood-and-apple-pie reform efforts as creating a network of science contacts at schools around the country, David told Science that she finds it "shocking" that NSTA would have ties to a company "that has spent millions misinforming the public about global warming."

Not surprisingly, NSTA sees things differently. "We don't do mass distributions for anybody; we don't send our members material that they haven't asked for," says NSTA's executive director, Gerald Wheeler. As for the association's corporate ties, Wheeler freely acknowledges that 16% of NSTA's $23 million a year budget comes from businesses, including 3.7% from the oil and gas industry. "We're working hard to get corporate America engaged in reforming STEM education," he says. "And in no case has anybody asked us to say anything , which we would never agree to do, anyway."

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/1130/3

[LiberalArkie]

1. I am so happy they are so truthful. I could not imagine a teacher ever telling a falsehood.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. This is really not a battle between teachers and Laurie David

It is between big oil and Al Gore.