The remarkable similarity between the strategy of natural gas opponents and a recent event at a Middletown, New York, elementary school raises the specter of student indoctrination. The Times-Herald-Record participated in using fourth graders to perpetuate a political stunt intended to send a message to Governor Cuomo to oppose hydraulic fracturing, a subject about which, 9-year olds can hardly be expected to offer a mature opinion.

To All Parents and Grandparents:

This morning I became aware of something deeply troubling that should offend each and every one of you. You can find, at the bottom of this post, what was so upsetting to me. I expect you will find it equally disturbing. It’s an article that appeared in the Middletown, New York, Times-Herald-Record describing an amazingly brazen case of elementary school indoctrination by natural gas opponents who seem to know no shame, assisted by the cooperation of the newspaper itself.

This manipulation of school children to deliver a public message attacking natural gas development is, I expect, no coincidence. I watched a two hour long show on Binghamton’s Public Access TV Channel 4 on Christmas Eve. The scene was a packed Unitarian Church in Ithaca. New York, but it wasn’t a holiday program. Rather, much of the discussion revolved around the Park Foundation funded Community Environmental Defense Council (CEDC) and strategies for preventing natural gas development at the local level. There was also discussion of how to flood the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation with comments on proposed new regulations (their target was 500,000 comments, but they fell far short).

All this was expected, but then the presentation took a sharp turn into new territory that deeply disturbed me as a parent and grandparent and should anger every school administrator, school board director, landowner and voter.

http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/elementary-indoctrination-t...