BP Allowed to Present Their Corporate “Spin” as Science to Louisiana Middle School Students

BP, NOAA, School Board

The American education system is clearly broken, with the country running a dismal 12th internationally in producing college graduates.  According to the National Centre for Education Statistics, only 74.9% of high school freshman graduate in the United States, and the average is a dismal 63.5% for Louisiana (2007-2008 school year).  Is it any wonder when a corporation is allowed to present their corporate propaganda as objective science in Louisiana classrooms, and with the Federal Government (i.e. NOAA) and local governments complicit in the “brainwashing”!  Their message in a nutshell: OIL IS GOOD; Eat the seafood which has been exposed to contaminants of all kinds-for which no one knows the long term effects; We stepped up to the plate in the disaster, but it wasn’t our fault!

The Tri-Parish Times has reported that Eighth grade students of Oaklawn Junior High School were able to sit in on one of four scheduled science demonstrations last Wednesday prepared by BP and Gary Ott of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The demonstrations were designed to better educate the students about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and give them the most current information available.  They plan to take their “dog and pony show” on the road to all of the affected parishes (10 at least), reaching a very large audience of impressionable minds.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

“This is the first session of many going on,” Charles Gaiennie, a BP representative said at Oaklawn’s library last week. “We are starting here in Terrebonne Parish with eighth grade because they are the first of school age kids that have a defined science class. We wanted to reach out to schools that are near communities that have been directly impacted by the oil spill, so Terrebonne was a good choice. There’s a lot of information that’s out there isn’t current or accurate.”

The students who attended the first demonstration, held at 8:30 a.m., filed into the library and were greeted by BP Community Support Lead Peter Clifford, who asked if they had heard about the oil spill. Students who answered Clifford’s questions correctly received a prize – a BP hat or pen.

“There was a lot of oil that went into the Gulf, so that’s the reason we’re here, and there were a lot of scientific things that had to happen with clean up,” Clifford told students.

Ott began opened his presentation by giving the students a quick overview on oil, then began his visual presentation with a fish tank full of water.

“We’re going to have a pretend spill with some vegetable oil,” Ott said. “I’m going to put the oil in the water from the bottom, and we’re going to pretend this is the Gulf of Mexico. The bottom to the top is one mile, and as the oil floats, it comes up to the surface and spreads on the top of the water.”

Using a mixture of vegetable oil and cocoa powder, Ott let the students watch the makeshift crude oil float to the top of the fish tank, then had volunteer Jaycie Jones, 13, help him clean up the oil….Ott also passed around oil-coated feathers to demonstrate the effects of oil on the wildlife in the Gulf, comparing the feathers to zippers.

“The zippers wont gather up again if oil is on the feathers,” Ott said.

After assisting Ott with the demonstration, Jaycie asked why people had blamed BP for the spill.

“When you have a spill and it’s going on day after day and you think it’s going to affect your life and your ability to fish and have a job, you feel helpless and you get angry,” Ott responded. “That’s what people do when they feel helpless, and who are they going to blame? They’re going to blame someone. So, one company that stood up was BP because they had interest in that well, and they took the heat.”

If “Big Oil” is allowed to teach science on the gulf coast, perhaps “Big Coal” should be designing the curriculum in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.  Will the United States lose the race to be at the forefront of the “Renewable Energy Revolution” because its’ politicians (at all levels) couldn’t say NO to the corporate special interests?  I hope not, but only time will tell. 

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Posted by Tracey Smith on Oct 1 2010. Filed under Latest Ocean News, Ocean Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.