25.6.01

"[T]he image problem for industry is serious among the young and could ultimately have a profound effect, on the free enterprise system itself. [...]The task of improving the image of the business-industrial complex is too vast for the MCA alone and requires a well coordinated-well financed national effort.[...]We foresee that EAC could serve member companies in supplying information and recommendations on successful programs of industry/education cooperation at the grassroots of education."

- from the 1974 Annual Report of the Education Activity Committee of the Manufacturing Chemist's Association (now the American Chemistry Council)

My enthusiasm for the power of public relations is frequently transformed into terrified awe. For example, here is a history of campaigns by the chemical industry to use schools as public relations battlegrounds. On the one hand, it may be argued that there is a pro-environment "bias" in primary education, but the counter to it should not be even shoddier scholarship or opinions masking as science. Instead students should be encouraged to seek the facts of the matter and derive there conclusions therefrom. If this is too difficult a task for a fourth grader, better to teach the incontravertible facts than to pursue the premature formation of opinions.

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