Should Shell be helping teach students about energy issues?

by Stephen Hui on March 22nd, 2013 at 12:06 PM

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With the seventh annual Earth Hour—you know, the event that sees people turn off their lights for an hour, tweet about it, and feel good about themselves—set to take place on Saturday (March 23), a PR rep drew my attention to something called the Classroom Energy Diet Challenge. Apparently, there are schools in the Vancouver area involved in it.

What is the Classroom Energy Diet Challenge? Its website explains:

The Classroom Energy Diet Challenge is a competition between Canadian classes from Kindergarten to Grade 12. As the students progress through the Challenge, they will learn valuable lessons about energy use and share that knowledge with the rest of the country. The Challenge is about more than great classroom prizes like a $5,000 Technology Package, it’s about increasing energy awareness among Canadian youth and educators.

Sounds pretty good, eh? That is, unless you don't think a classroom exercise on energy awareness should be "sponsored and administered" by Shell Canada (in association with Canadian Geographic). Yes, that Shell Canada, the subsidiary of multinational oil-and-gas giant Royal Dutch Shell. The same Shell that Greenpeace and the Berne Declaration presented with this year's Public Eye People's Award for worst company of the year, and that's heavily involved in the Alberta tar sands. Its business is a major driver of the world's present ecological crisis.

According to a February news release from Shell Canada, 40,000 students from across the country, including those in a Grade 3 class at Surrey's Prince Charles elementary school, are participating in this year's "three-month program to increase their energy literacy". The challenge involves "energy-focused, curriculum based lesson plans" and a video contest. The challenge site also lists schools in Vancouver, Delta, Langley, Maple Ridge, North Vancouver, and Port Moody as taking part.

In January, a Greenpeace report included the tar sands on its list of the “world’s biggest dirty energy projects”. The report noted that "production of oil from the tar sands in Alberta will triple from 1.5 to 4.5 million barrels a day by 2035, adding 706 million tonnes of CO2 to global emissions a year. By 2020, the tar sands expansion would add annual emissions of 420 million tonnes of CO2, equal to those of Saudi Arabia."

I hope the kids are learning about that, and being fed much more than tips like "fuel efficiency is all about smoothness" (in the Transportation Tricks challenge), through this program.

Comments

3 Comments

Lee L.

Mar 22, 2013 at 1:43pm

I don't think Shell or any other agenda laden organization should be teaching our children ( and I ESPECIALLY include Greenpeace, WWF, Sierra Club, Vision Vancouver, etc., Catholic church, etc. under that designation). Unfortunately, the BC Teachers' Federation would also fall under that umbrella.

What children SHOULD be taught is that there is a very big question in the news and very unbiased writing in the mainstream media about it. They should be taught that climate science may have a great deal to say about the future which they will be living, and they should be taught both sides of all issues, including energy, and taught what critical thinking looks like.

They should NOT be taught that the planet is going to burn up if they don't ride bikes or walk to school and they definitely should not have Greenpeace study materials in the classroom unless balanced by the likes of Shell and that all opinions on the seriousness or even existence of a crisis would be explored.

School is about educating citizens, and that is partly about socializing them. It ought not be about indoctrinating them into a new world order. That, in my opinion, is for them to choose for themselves or not.