Illustration by Eben McCue

Oil’s pipeline to America’s schools

Inside the fossil-fuel industry’s not-so-subtle push into K-12 education

5:00 a.m., June 15, 2017

State Rep. Tom Gann and State Sen. Marty Quinn read aloud to first graders at Jefferson Elementary School in Pryor, Oklahoma. Oklahoma Energy Resources Board

Jennifer Merritt’s first-graders at Jefferson Elementary School in Pryor, Oklahoma, were in for a treat. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, the students gathered in late November for story time with two special guests, state Rep. Tom Gann and state Sen. Marty Quinn. Dressed in suits, the Republican lawmakers read aloud from “Petro Pete’s Big Bad Dream,” a parable in which a Bob the Builder lookalike awakens to find his toothbrush, hardhat and even the tires on his bike missing. Abandoned by the school bus, Pete walks to Petroville Elementary in his pajamas.

“Petro Pete’s Big Bad Dream” was published in 2016. Oklahoma Energy Resources Board

“It sounds like you are missing all of your petroleum by-products today!” his teacher, Mrs. Rigwell, exclaims, extolling oil’s benefits to Pete and fellow students like Sammy Shale. Before long, Pete decides that “having no petroleum is like a nightmare!” The tale is the latest in an illustrated series by the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board, a state agency funded by oil and gas producers. The board has spent upwards of $40 million over the past two decades on K-12 education with a pro-industry bent, including hundreds of pages of curricula, a speaker series and an afterschool program — all at no cost to educators. A similar program in Ohio shows teachers how to “frack” Twinkies using straws to pump for cream and advises on the curriculum for a charter school that revolves around shale drilling. A national program whose sponsors include BP and Shell claims it’s too soon to tell if the earth is heating up, but “a little warming might be a good thing.” Decades of documents reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity reveal a tightly woven network of organizations that works in concert with the oil and gas industry to paint a rosy picture of fossil fuels in America’s classrooms. Led by advertising and public-relations strategists, the groups have long plied the tools of their trade on impressionable children and teachers desperate for resources. Proponents of programs like the one in Oklahoma say they help the oil and gas industry replenish its aging workforce by stirring early interest in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. But some experts question the educational value and ethics of lessons touting an industry that plays a central role in climate change and air pollution. Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, likened industry-sponsored curricula that ignore climate science to advertising. “You’re exploiting that trusted relationship between the student and the teacher,” he said. Leiserowitz — whose research has focused on how culture, politics and psychology impact public perception of the environment — said fossil-fuel companies have a stake in perpetuating a message of oil dependency.

In “Petro Pete’s Big Bad Dream,” the main character finds out life without petroleum is a “nightmare.” Pictured on the right is fellow classmate, Sammy Shale. Oklahoma Energy Resources Board

As early as the 1940s, the industry’s largest and most powerful lobby group targeted K-12 schools as a key element of its fledgling marketing strategy. By the 1960s, the American Petroleum Institute was looking to shake its reputation as a “monopoly which reaped excessive profits” and set out to cultivate a network of “thought leaders” that included educators, journalists, politicians and even clergy, according to an organizational history copyrighted by API in 1990. The idea caught on. Hundreds of oil-and-gas-centric lesson plans are now available at the click of a mouse. The programs occupy a gray area between corporate sponsorship and promotion at a time when climate science has increasingly come under siege at the highest levels of government. On June 1, President Donald Trump, flanked by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator – and former Oklahoma attorney general – Scott Pruitt, announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

This story is a collaboration with StateImpact Oklahoma, a reporting project of NPR member stations in Oklahoma. Versions of this story also appear in The Guardian US and The Hechinger Report.

“Teachers are taking their cues from the political situation around them,” said Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit that advocates for climate-change and evolution education. He pointed to a survey that found teachers in Republican counties and states are less likely to teach the scientific consensus on global warming — regardless of the educator’s politics. “Teachers live in local communities, they’re sensitive to the needs and desires of the people paying their paychecks.” Branch’s group supports wide-scale adoption of Next Generation Science Standards, a joint effort by states and educational organizations to revamp K-12 science that has met with political backlash since the standards were published in 2013. Oklahoma is among a dozen states that have opted for watered-down versions, sometimes omitting provisions on evolution and the anthropogenic causes of global warming. Along with Colorado, Kansas and Montana, Oklahoma legislators have also championed bills requiring that educators teach “both sides” of those scientific concepts. A 2016 study confirmed that America’s youth receive mixed messages on climate change. Nearly a third of middle- and high-school science teachers nationwide have wrongly suggested global warming is naturally occurring. A quarter have spent as much time rebutting evidence of warming as they have presenting it.

Teachers gathered at Choctaw High School for a workshop in April by the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board. Joe Wertz of StateImpact Oklahoma

Freddie Fuelless and Oliver Oilpatch Schools and libraries across Oklahoma have received more than 9,000 complimentary copies of “Petro Pete’s Big Bad Dream” since it was published last year. The story has been a hit with Jennifer Merritt’s students, who won the storytelling visit from lawmakers after submitting a photo to the energy resources board via Facebook. Posing on a jungle gym, the students clutched stuffed animals and footballs — their “favorite petroleum by-products.” “It’s not some boring thing,” Merritt said of the board’s “Little Bits” curriculum for kindergarten through second grade, which features alliterative characters like Freddie Fuelless and Oliver Oilpatch. Without it, she said, “I probably wouldn’t have taught first graders about energy.”

This story is the latest installment in Carbon Wars, the Center for Public Integrity's ongoing look into the fossil fuel industry and climate change.

Merritt is among 14,000 Oklahoma teachers who have attended workshops on how to use what the board calls its “innovative, one-of-a-kind science and energy curriculum in their classrooms.” Participants are reimbursed for supplies year-round and can register their classes for free museum field trips — so long as the exhibits highlight petroleum. On a recent Saturday, a workshop was in session at Choctaw High School, east of Oklahoma City. The parking lot was bustling as teachers loaded their cars with heavy tubs, each stuffed with up to $1,200 worth of calculators, lab equipment and other ­materials. In classrooms, some teachers plotted oil-production trends while others watched bubbling brews simulating how the industry wrings oil from depleting fields. In an email, board Chairman Danny Morgan wrote that the organization doesn’t use public funds and “does not function like a typical agency.” Under state law, half of its revenues from oil and gas producers are spent restoring abandoned oil wells. Morgan pointed to a board safety campaign aimed at preventing children from playing on dangerous pumpjacks that dot the state, writing, “if just one child is kept safe through the awareness this program created, it is well worth the effort.”

During the workshop, Oklahoma educators learned about oil production and other aspects of the petroleum industry. Joe Wertz of StateImpact Oklahoma

Brothers & Company, an advertising firm, explains how “Lab Time with Leo” was developed in this behind-the-scenes look. The firm is contracted by the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board to create both commercials and educational materials. Brothers & Company

“The Magic Barrel” was a promotional video produced by DuPont for the American Petroleum Institute. The film hyped petrochemicals like Freon-12. The Hagley Museum

‘The Magic Suitcase’

Smiling broadly, the host pulls item after item from two large drums. Plastic wrap, shingles, Lucite — all “modern day miracles” made possible by oil and petrochemicals. Three minutes into the muted-color film, the man in the tan suit and plaid tie pours Freon-12 from a pressurized canister. “You may be able to note that it is boiling violently, just as water would boil on a stove,” he says, holding up a glass of the clear liquid. “Yes, it’s a safe refrigerant. I’ll just pour some on my clothing. And now, watch the frost appear. I’ll blow on it. Oh, it’s cold all right.” Scientists now know Freon is far from benign. Forms of the coolant are still being phased out after research in the 1980s found it was rapidly depleting the Earth’s ozone layer. The volatile chemical is moderately toxic when inhaled.

DuPont promoted “The Magic Barrel” film in a brochure. The Hagley Museum

The Hagley Museum

This spread in a 1954 issue of DuPont Magazine outlined the company’s efforts with the oil industry to promote “The Magic Barrel” in schools.

Joe Wertz, a reporter with StateImpact Oklahoma, contributed to this story.