Some parents are concerned about what their children are taught in school concerning the environment. While few would question the need for students to approach environmental subjects in a scientifically sound way, some educators -- caught up in the latest environmental scare or fad -- are apparently panicking their young charges.

• Students at a Tucson, Arizona, elementary school were encouraged to write essays deploring the construction of a nearby housing development -- with one student objecting that "they're using that land just for people to live in homes they don't really need."

• One mother was prompted to look into what her child was being taught when the six-year-old lamented, "they killed trees to make my bed."

• Human activity is described in some textbooks with words like "menace, catastrophe, collapse, shortage, disaster, breakdown, alarm, degradation and deadly."

Environmental researchers Michael Sanera and Jane S. Shaw, authors of the forthcoming, "Facts, Not Fear: A Parent's Guide to Teaching Children About the Environment," assessed over 140 textbooks and nearly 170 environmental books written for children. They found that, on major environmental issues the "education" was strictly one-sided.

• Children were encouraged to mix water and vinegar to obtain "acid rain," not told that research proves acid rain has harmed only a very small number of lakes.

• They are not taught that recycling can also waste energy and create its own pollution -- and that it can't save trees.

• They are taught that there will eventually be too many people on the earth for it to support, not that the world's population growth has already decreased dramatically.

Critics charge that the Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Education Division has reinforced this anti-scientific bias.

• In a recent report to Congress, the division -- which has received $34.9 million in appropriations over the past five years to promote environmental learning -- complained about a "disproportionate emphasis on science-oriented activities" in environmental education today.

• EPA makes clear that teachings from its "Environmental Science Education Materials Review Guide" are to "reflect EPA policy on the topics explored."

• To assure that its views are taught as gospel, it has funneled nearly $2 million to the North American Association for Environmental Education to fund teacher training programs.

Environmental activists are reportedly quietly pushing for a reauthorization of the 1990 act which created the division. Reauthorization has already passed the Senate and will soon face a vote in the House.

Source: Michael Sanera and Jane S. Shaw, "The ABCs of Environmental Myths," Wall Street Journal, September 4, 1996.