At Florida Gulf Coast University, where the curriculum is centered on the UN's Earth Charter, students say mandated eco-propaganda actually fosters anti-environmentalism. They are gathering signatures to a petition to present to the administration to ask that the required sustainability course, the "Colloquium," be made an elective rather than mandated for all. Among the reasons the petition gives for its request are the following:
- If the course is intended to share opinions and promote discussion, it should offer diverse viewpoints in the required course materials.
- If the course is intended to present scientific information, it should avoid politically motivated material (such as An Inconvenient Truth and The Story of Stuff) and utilize only objective data.
- Presenting subjective opinion as objective science is not desirable in an academic environment.
- If the material presented in the Colloquium course is as important as claimed, students will voluntarily opt to take the course based on their own self-interest.
We at the National Association of Scholars salute these efforts. While there is arguably value in having a core curriculum for all students (now a nearly extinct concept), the purpose of such a curriculum should be to make sure students graduate having taken at least basic courses in core subjects such as mathematics, science, literature, and history. Sustainability and the premises of the Earth Charter are not core subjects, and the FGCU students are right to recognize this. We hope the administration at FGCU gets the message.
