This was written by a Montgomery County Student Environmental Activist

"Our global environment is facing an unprecedented crisis. From Maryland to Alaska and Indonesia to Russia and Brazil to Cameroon, ancient forests are being logged to fuel consumer consumption, especially of paper products, and especially by the United States. Enormous strip mines scar the Earth in the United States and throughout the Third World, extracting minerals to be made into disposable soda cans. People everywhere are being displaced, land and water polluted by petroleum extraction, which goes into the plastic in our food containers. In the midst of this, mere lip service is paid to the cause of protecting our environment. The time for action is now, but what is being taught to the students of today, and the leaders of tomorrow, is that the environmental protection is inconvenient and thus unimportant. Nowhere is this truer than in the much-vaunted public schools of Montgomery County, Maryland.

Every day, students who attend Montgomery County Public Schools watch paper that could be recycled instead hauled away to the landfill or the incinerator. Soda cans join food waste in cafeteria trashcans. There is no curriculum for environmental science classes, and instructional materials in some science classes are even provided by industry trade associations, telling students things like why mining is entirely environmentally benign.

The importance of environmental education is well established among today’s educators. It is not "brainwashing" to tell students the truth – that America has lost 96% of its old growth forests, that fisheries are in free-fall decline, that by the time kindergartners get to college they might only be able to study orangutans and rhinos in zoos. So elementary school students are lectured about global warming, the ozone hole, endangered species, and the necessity of recycling. Children are sent out with plastic garbage bags and rubber gloves to gather trash, but then watch ten times as much trash get thrown away every lunch period. Students are told about the necessity of recycling, yet their schools do not recycle, and they see their teachers throw away recyclable paper daily. Such hypocrisy does not go unnoticed by children, who are perceptive and look to adults for clues as to how to behave and to think. Their enthusiasm about the environment only lasts until they notice that it is an afterthought to most of their teachers.

Speech without action is worthless, because it teaches children that the environment is a joke, something to be spoken about in sanctimonious tones, and otherwise ignored. Lip service to the environment must stop and be replaced with concrete and effective initiatives for environmental education. Students must be made to see that teachers mean what they say about planet Earth. The school system itself must become an object lesson in environmental awareness. System-wide waste reduction and recycling programs that are taken seriously by administrators is a logical place to start."

"It is important to teach the broader ethic of conservation to children so that they may grow up to support and practice sustainability. The MCSEA survey found that the state of environmental education in the county school system is dismal. In elementary schools, a curriculum called Caring for the Earth for third through sixth grades was developed. This curriculum was developed over 11 years ago when elementary schools still had sixth grade classes. This curriculum is an excellent way to teach an environmental ethic in elementary schools, but it has not been revised in 11 years. MCSEA is not aware of its current availability to teachers.

In middle school, students report little to no environmental education. Every student participles in an outdoor education program in the sixth grade. Besides this three-day program (which was cut from five days), environmental education is spotty and depends on the school and teacher.

High schools have no environmental education requirement. Environmental science classes are offered as an elective in most schools, but the majority of students do not take them. Sometimes environmental issues come up in classes dealing with the natural sciences, but again it varies from school to school and teacher to teacher. MCPS has not created a countywide curriculum for environmental science."