The industry-led Oklahoma Energy Resource Board has spent $50 million since the 1990s training the state’s K-12 teachers to teach a science and math curriculum that critics claim is more industry promotion that real education.
An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and StateImpact Oklahoma, a collaboration of local NPR member stations, found that the lesson plans include the benefits of fracking and how to calculate the slope of a pipeline. The lessons also avoid all mention of climate change.
Along with sponsored field trips to oil-related sites, the program also offers teachers $1,200 worth of supplies and lab equipment — a difficult lure to turn down in a state with one of the most notoriously underfunded school systems.
“Charles Anderson, a professor at Michigan State University who studies environmental literacy and develops curricula, says the Oklahoma lessons are blatantly pro-energy, but do not appear to deliberately distort science,” says NPR. ‘“I give them credit for basically being honest,’ he says. But, he says, the board’s pro-industry agenda is only telling ‘half the story’ by omitting global issues like climate change.”
Oklahoma Energy Resource Board representatives deny that the lesson plans are biased. The curriculum has been used in Kansas and pitched to at least five other states.