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Forum Post: Shell Oil Awards Christian Teacher $10k for “Exemplary Science Teaching”

Posted 11 years ago on April 6, 2012, 8:05 a.m. EST by GirlFriday (17435)
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“In the same state (Indiana) and county (Lafayette), AND at the same school (Jefferson High), where, as one resident put it, "the nightmare of every biology teacher happened," when creationists petitioned the school board to have creation science added to the biology curriculum, science teacher Joseph Ruhl was awarded a cash prize from SHELL OIL for his "positive impact on his students, school and community through exemplary classroom science teaching."

To which environmental science teacher John Borowski responded:

“Maybe Shell will honor my 31 years of environmental science teaching … Send them an email [and] tell them I teach the kids of Shell Oil's complicity in the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa. Tell them I am not an activist, but a historian trying to give kids perspective about corporate power and abuse. Corporations are trying to enslave these teachers. The best thing a teacher could do is rip up that check in front of their faces. It is blood money. It is tainted, horrible money.”

It may be worth mentioning that when I first met him, back in the 1990s, John Borowski was leading a courageous (and lonely) fight to get Channel One out of the public schools. Channel One is the 12-minute, corporate-sponsored “news program” broadcast via satellite to middle schools and high schools across the US. It markets to approximately eight thousand schools across the country and, according to Wikipedia, reaches an estimated six million students.


In light of the unholy state of denial currently afflicting this nation and its legislators, it is hardly surprising then that Shell Oil, a full blown member of the Koch Brothers-funded, climate-denying American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), would present “science teacher” Joseph Ruhl with an award for “exemplary teaching.”

After all, in a corporate-owned nation, increasingly governed by “leaders” willing to hold “the inspired, infallible Word of God” to be superior to scientific fact, what could be more “exemplary” than the teachings of one of its apostles?

READ MORE HERE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/06-1

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