[Gondring]

As a professional scientist and environmental consultant for more than a decade, I see in this article an off-topic point that I'd like to address.

I think few people are aware of an ongoing struggle in education.

Note the name of where this took place: Apple Valley's School of Environmental Studies

That's not the same as Environmental Science. Environmental Studies includes things like activism, etc. Many people are vigorously opposing the attempts to water down the science side of academic programs and still call them science. When I'd receive a résumé from a prospective entry-level environmental candidate, I had to be careful to determine which type of training they'd received in school--environmental science or merely environmental studies.

The author gets things right, saying "...the specialized science and environmental programs..." later in the article. That's not to say that environmental can't be science, but it's clear that this program treats them separately, and does both.

So, if any of you have children interested in environmental stuff and they want to major in it, be sure they get a real degree, not just a sheet of paper.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Very good catch, Gondring. I'm an engineer who despairs at the science and math background kids come out of schools with today, and I blew right past that reference.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[brbethke]

Good point. This school tries to walk the line between actual science and Gaiaism and does not always succeed. Witness the classes in eco-architecture and indigenous philosophy.

When I first went to college, way back in the Dark Ages, I thought I wanted to major in wildlife biology, as ecology had not yet become a recognized discipline. Fortunately for the world I could not hack organic chem, and therefore changed majors to something far less intellectually demanding: Journalism.

I shudder to think that I *could* have stuck it out in some modern mushy discipline like "eco-activism," and that, naieve and arrogant liberal twerp that I was back then, I could have done a *lot* of damage if I had.