How the Oil and Gas Industry Smuggles Corporate Propaganda into Schools

Petroganda: The Economy vs. The Environment

Get 'Em While They're Young

How Big Oil Killed Our Political Imagination

How the 'Father of Forestry' Inspired Big Oil

The Fossil Fuel Industry’s Century-Long Quest to Invade Elementary Schools

Disinformation Techniques: A Glossary

Why the Fossil Fuel Industry Infiltrated Schools

[00:00:10] Just about everybody on the island had some special work to do. Ian was the best fisherman on the island, so he more or less kept everybody supplied with fresh fish. Then there was Benedict Hose, who by a gifted nature, could climb trees better than anybody else. So he became the coconut seller. Big Daddy's daughter Raquel presided over the village melon patch. "Get your fresh melons here.."There was a...

[00:00:33] This is from a 1976 educational cartoon about a fictional place called the Kingdom of Moka. It was made by Amoco Oil, which is now BP, and it's full of just all kinds of racist and sexist garbage. The man in the clip who's delegated to fishing is a caricature of a black man and the woman presiding over the melon patch. Well, let's just say they're clearly not just talking about cantaloupes.

[00:01:02] Good morning Ms. Raquel! Hi Benny, how are the coconuts hanging? Oh fine, just fine, ma'am. Say, how'd you like to trade a couple of those?

[00:01:09] Oh yeah. So the movie is based on film strips that Amoco Oil started making about the Kingdom of Moka in the early 1970s. And the film strips are just as bad not only because of the obvious stereotypes and bigotry, but also because they're full of insidious messages about how our economy should work.

[00:01:32] Yeah, yeah, that's right. The kingdom of Moka presents itself as a story of how the economy just sort of evolved. So at the beginning of the story, the Mokans have a barter system, but then they realize that's inefficient, which OK. Then they start using clamshells as currency and one character starts selling wood. And then as if because there's some innate force in all of us pushing us to become capitalists, he creates a corporation.

[00:02:03] Well, I incorporated myself! Did it hurt? No, what I mean is I formed a company like they have over on the Beaver Islands.

[00:02:12] Yes, in the kingdom of Moka, Wood is what's used to power cars. And this guy who has the logging company, he's supposed to be the voice of reason in the story. The hero. And one message he brings is that taxation is a burden, that it mainly just benefits politicians.

[00:02:30] If we don't make profits, we can't keep our company growing to take care of everybody's needs, and we can't go exploring for new sources and we can't step up our replanning program.

[00:02:40] Some people complain about the fact that this guy is logging too much, for sure. They're saying he's chopping down the forest they love, but they're just dismissed as a silly special interest group, rather than a group of people trying to protect the natural world and its benefits for both mental health and keeping the kingdom inhabitable.

[00:02:58] That's right, and it will bum you out to hear that this cartoon, which sounds like some sort of silly bit of archival from the 70s  is in fact still shown in college economics 101 classes today, the Year of Our Lord 2021, and not as a joke, not as an example of propaganda. If you look at the comments under it on YouTube, a whole bunch of folks are like, Wow, I got here from Econ Class. But it originally targeted little kids, kids who were still in grade school. And the message is clear extractive capitalism is progress, and anyone who goes against it, particularly to protect nature, is primitive and backwards. Amoco made a coloring book of the Mokans for grade school kids too, and Carroll Muffett from the Center for International Environmental Law walked me through it a few years back.

[00:03:56] So in 1976, Amoco Oil Company and Standard Oil Company, which is now ExxonMobil, published a comic book, a coloring book about the Mokans, a mythical economic society, and the coloring book is as remarkable and notable for its pervasive racism as it is for its arch conservative neoliberal economics. But at the root of its argument is the idea that children should be wary of any form of regulation, any form of social control because it gets in the way of economics, it gets in the way of free choices and it's ultimately disruptive. And so this educational package was presented as as a study in economics. But at its heart, it was really about being innately wary of any form of collective government action.

[00:04:56] There's something that's just..about putting it in the form of a coloring book..that somehow makes it so much worse. And Carroll reminds us, right, about why the industry would bother spending any money on stuff like this.

[00:05:07] What's remarkable is. Is that by reaching children in schools, you're shaping not only their understanding of individual facts, but their understanding of the world. Why? Because what you learn in school, you learn as the truth about the world. You don't learn that it's advertising. You don't learn that it's propaganda. What you're taught, particularly in those early formative years, is this is the world. This is these are the basic facts about how we live. And so if you can shape children's understanding of those basic facts, if you can inculcate that, it is remarkably difficult to remove.

[00:05:47] And that is what we're digging into in this series. I'm Amy Westervelt

[00:05:53] and I'm Dharna Noor. Welcome back to The ABCs of Big Oil, a mini series from Earther and Drilled. Today, Elementary School. Stay with us!

[00:06:16] The Standard School Broadcast. Radio's oldest network, musical and educational programs presented as a public service by the Standard Oil company of California.

[00:06:32] This is from a record I found of the Standard Oil School broadcast. Dharna, do you want to guess when that broadcast started?

[00:06:42] Hmmm like the 1940s? Maybe? That was sort of the company's heyday, right?

[00:06:47] Good guess. But no, it was 1928.

[00:06:51] The Standard School Broadcast, which was inaugurated on October 18, 1928, is a pioneer in education by radio, the school broadcast was first heard by only 72 schools. And today it is received regularly by many thousands of schools, by millions of school students and educators, and by many additional thousands of parents and other home listeners.

[00:07:15] It's the oldest educational radio program in the country, the very first one, and it was technically a music appreciation program. It went alongside a classical music show that Standard Oil also sponsored on the regular radio. But kids weren't just learning about John Philip Sousa and Louis Armstrong, the show also regularly smuggled in bits of American history, told through the lens of Standard Oil.

[00:07:44] Convenience is the great thing. The automobile is an incredible convenience to the average American in his everyday life. For parents getting to work, running down to the store or picking up the kids and for the kids themselves, going on vacation trips, going on dates, almost everything we Americans do involves the automobile in some way. Don't forget that most of us took a quick ride in a car on our way to being born the scratch anything on the debit side for the automotive industry.

[00:08:10] May I remind you that many of us will take a quick ride in the car to our death with scratch?

[00:08:17] Would you give up your automobile? Would you give up your standard of living? Would you prefer to live like an Australian Aborigine without even a vessel to carry water in it? A lifespan of 30 years?

[00:08:30] This is the sort of thing that I don't think people necessarily realize that oil companies have been doing for. Well, in this case, I guess almost like a century, and it's not science or environmental focused at all. It's presenting a very specific picture of what America is and what it's supposed to be.

[00:08:46] That's right. That's right. And really the first company to figure out how valuable getting into schools is, was actually Standard Oil. So it's not really overstating things to say the fossil fuel industry pioneered this tactic.

[00:09:01] Yeah. And later in the series, we're also going to get into how they were the first to infiltrate university curricula. But first, more cartoons.

[00:09:09] That's right. The Mokans weren't the only cartoon characters used to tell kids how the world works. Some companies didn't have to make up their own characters. They could put their messages in the mouths of already beloved cartoons.

[00:09:28] A couple of my favorite my favorite possessions are comic books, Mickey and goofy comic books that ExxonMobil put out in conjunction with Disney to teach kids about renewable energy and energy conservation and environmental concerns.

[00:09:47] And it's perhaps unsurprising that while children learn from Mickey and Goofy about energy conservation and environmental concerns was We really need gas. We really need fracking. Nuclear energy is fine. There are a lot of problems with wind and solar. It may work out eventually, but thank goodness for this bountiful resource of oil, gas and tar sands. And these comic books were from the 1970s.

[00:10:19] I happen to own these comic books, too. They're also among my prized possessions. And on the inside flap, they tell you that they're part of a whole package. So these were sent out to teachers and there's an ordering form on the inside flap that tells you that you can order, you know, more copies of the comic books, and you can also order a film that goes along with it. And the package included not only these comic books and film strip, but also a ride at Disney World in Epcot Center. Yep, it was called the Universe of Energy. .. But what's extra crazy about it, and I just learned about this fairly recently, is that the original proposal for this ride slash exhibit at Epcot Center was supposed to be called the Future World of Energy. And it was supposed to be all about solar and other renewables.

[00:11:34] It's kind of unbelievable. But then it also kind of makes sense, right? We're talking about the late 1970s here. So that's right on the heels of the oil embargo that fuel producing countries imposed against the U.S. in 1973. And also, it's right in the middle of this years-long energy crisis in America that followed it. So the mid to late 70s is when you got Americans rationing gas and having to line up for it for hours at the gas station.

[00:11:59] Funding for this program has been provided by this station and other public television stations and by grants from Exxon Corporation, Allied Chemical Corporation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

[00:12:12] Did you catch the funding announcement

[00:12:15] Tonight, is gas rationing the answer? But first, for those of you who have been spared the experience so far, we want to share the emotions Americans are feeling on the gas lines. Late last week, independent producer Phil Garvin spent a day on a line at a service station in Queens, New York. This has become common in many states. In the east, cars have been lining up before dawn. By the time the pumps opened, many had been waiting two and three hours.

[00:12:43] This is the period of time when Jimmy Carter was installing solar at the White House, and there was this big turn in general towards solar as a way to get off of foreign oil. But Exxon was like, No, no, no. The solution to foreign oil is domestic oil. So in addition to all of their lobbying and everything else, they signed on in 1978 to sponsor this Future World of Energy exhibit. But they suggest widening the scope a little bit. Yeah, I bet they did. Instead of focusing on a future that left fossil fuels out of the picture, now, the ride would focus on today and tomorrow and all the available forms of energy. Here's the promo that eventually came out about it.

[00:13:27] Even from the outside, the energy pavilion will be a strong visual statement as it generates power via its own solar energy systems. Here, the formation of fossil fuel energy will be portrayed, climaxed by a sudden energy storm of wind, lightning, rain, fire and volcanic eruptions, demonstrating the almost endless potential of raw energy available for man. Visitors will see the alternatives and choices we must consider today, racing against the clock in a search for new energy and finally harnessing tomorrow's best new sources for the future world of energy.

[00:14:10] And again, what's being pushed in the exhibit and the accompanying comic books and film strip is the idea that all these other energy sources are sort of nice little supplements, but they're not really up to the big task of powering America.

[00:14:23] Yeah, that's right. And there's a bunch of messaging that pins the responsibility to solve the energy crisis on individuals and conservation. It's all about how you can conserve energy by turning the lights off stuff like that. So, you know, the precursor to the individual carbon footprint calculator and how you are basically responsible for any of the downsides of fossil fuel use, because after all, you're the one that's using this energy.

[00:14:52] Yeah, yeah. And of course, we see this all the time, and you start to see this talking point that we heard in reporter Katie Worth's tape of that oil and gas industry spokesperson in Arkansas that we heard last episode kind of bubbling up here, too. So there's this idea that actually the industry is actively minimizing environmental impacts, and that's still super prevalent in schools today. Kert Davies from the Climate Investigation Center actually experienced it firsthand with his daughter when she was in elementary school.

[00:15:23] I can't remember how the conversation started, but somehow my daughter came home from school and probably third or fourth grade, and she said, we did this really cool lesson today where the teacher gave us a chocolate chip cookie and a toothpick, and we had to carefully extract the chocolate chips without breaking the cookie. And the lesson was, you can do mining safely. You can get the yummy chocolate chips out of the cookie without ruining the cookie, the cookie being the land. And you know, I flipped out, I was like, Oh my God, you're in mining propaganda.

[00:16:01] Oh my God. That was about a decade ago. But you talked to someone who had a similar experience just this year, right, Dharna?

[00:16:09] I did. Yeah. And in some ways, it's actually even more bizarre. So this past spring, in the spring of twenty twenty one, this guy Gleb Bahmutav was picking up his nine year old kid from his elementary school, which is called John Tobin Montessori School, and it's in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And he found something really weird in his son's bag.

[00:16:30] I pick up my son. And it was such a beautiful day in the spring. And usually, you know, they really the kids and they go straight to the playground. They're running around monkey bars and then we go home and my son usually has a backpack with lunch box. And I was reaching something like I was trying to pack his hoodie or something back into the backpack. And when I see he has a couple of booklets inside the backpack and, you know, sometimes they give school books right or materials to read, and I have to look. To me, it was like, Oh yeah, it looks like a coloring book.

[00:17:12] I cannot believe that of all places for this to show up, it's not in Midland, Texas. It's in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at a Montessori school.

[00:17:23] Yeah, we we talked about that, too. It's just the most blue liberal enclave of the most liberal state, the most liberal school you could possibly find in this enclave.

[00:17:36] So Gleb took a closer look at the booklets and saw that they were both stamped with the logo for Eversource, the energy utility company that serves Cambridge residents and millions of other people all over New England. One book had the title Natural Gas Your Invisible Friend. The other was called Nat and Gus. Both were about how amazing gas is and how important it is for our lives. There's literally a page titled Natural Gas Is Great.

[00:18:07] Every other page is like has something positive, right? Like using natural gas is the cleanest way to power our cars. For example, right? And there's Literally a natural gas grid activity where it is a page we've cut out of our like a regular stand alone house, right? And this is home sweet home and natural gas has so many uses in and around the home and you're supposed to match how and where the gas is used right? And you use it for barbecue grill or pool heater or furnace fireplace, range, vehicle, water heater. And and then you have to like going further would be like, talk to your family members about how they use gas in their homes, right, and why they prefer them.

[00:18:57] So you've got the industry using music and cartoon characters to shape kids understanding of the world and America's place in it. And then you've got them infiltrating specific curricula in later years with things like the chocolate chip cookie experiment or that lady in Arkansas talking about the happy medium that gas gives us.

[00:19:18] Yeah, it's really just like incredible and kind of shocking how comprehensive it is, like how many ways kids are being hit with these talking points linking free enterprise to fossil fuels and then connecting all of that to like American identity and freedom. And I think it's really important to remember that these are multiple companies doing all of this at once. So, for instance, one kid could be getting the Exxon comics and the Mokans and the chocolate chip cookies experiment, and probably more than that, just while they're in elementary school.

[00:19:49] Yes. Yes, totally. The ride at Disney World is the one that I think shocked me the most is because it's like, I don't know. It seems so next level to me because Exxon got involved not just in sort of sponsoring the exhibit, but and putting its name on the sign and all that kind of stuff and making these ancillary materials. But they actually completely shifted the whole focus of that ride and exhibit.

[00:20:17] And, you know, maybe like one Disney  ride by itself doesn't have the power to change the whole world, but it's not hard to think about what might have happened if all the people who experienced Exxon universe of energy had instead experience the original vision, that Future of Energy powered entirely by renewables.

[00:20:37] I mean, I feel like we hear all the time about the fact that people can't imagine a future without fossil fuels. And then I'm like, Well, I wonder why. It's also just really eerily familiar to the what ifs that come up when you look into all the research the Exxon was doing during these exact same years into alternative energy sources and what greenhouse gas emissions were doing to the planet.

[00:21:03] Yeah. And actually the existence of all these educational materials that sort of steer people away from those ideas at the same time, make it pretty clear that Exxon never really had any intention to shift away from its core product—from oil—at all.

[00:21:18] Yeah, yeah, it definitely does not seem like it. I think that's been kind of a pervasive story that  I think people want to believe, maybe because thanks to a hundred years worth of propaganda, people like to give companies souls. But this idea that like, oh, you know, the road not taken, Exxon was totally going to become an alternative energy company. And I think maybe that evidence says otherwise.

[00:21:46] Totally. And no one ever force them to.

[00:21:51] God, yeah. And it gets, I think in some ways, even worse in high school, which is where we're going to go in our next episode. And we're going to take a look at how the industry shows up in civics classes and economics and social studies. So please come back for for that.

[00:22:06] That's right. I promise we won't give you a wedgie. That's it for this time. We're taking you to school in this collaboration between Drilled and Earther, Darnell and I have found a lot of really interesting and shocking things. So stay with us. Drilled is an original production of the Critical Frequency podcast network. This series is a collaboration with Earther, Gizmodo's climate and justice site. My co-host and co reporter for the series is Darna North. Our editors are Julia Richie for Drilled and Brian Kahn for Earther. Our producer is Juliana Bradley. Mixing and mastering by Peter Duff. Our fact checker is Trevor Gowan. Music is by Martin Weissenberg. Our artwork was created by Matthew Fleming. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project. You can find corresponding stories, videos and documents for this series on further dot com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.

Transcription

Since the 1920s, oil companies have been creating music, activities, coloring books, comic books, movies and more to shape how American kids think about society, the economy, and the environment. Today, we look at their efforts in elementary school.

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