Learning the Conservation ABCs

The big event of the day for the eighth-grade students at Ken Caryl Junior High School in suburban Denver is the "Great Boil-Over." Under the rules, contestants are pitted against one another to determine who can boil water fastest --with the least amount of fuel. The exercise is part of a growing trend in U.S. elementary and high schools: instruction in the basics of energy conservation. The aim is to prepare students for a world where energy is no longer cheap or plentiful. Teachers explain how students' fuel-using habits touch on the larger issues of dwindling supplies of oil, gas and other fossil fuels and the importance of alternative energy sources.

In the Denver program, one of the nation's most advanced, teachers started from scratch and wrote a textbook with the help of the Colorado office of energy conservation. The course involves 390 students in six Jefferson County schools. Points are made mostly through class activities. A sample: "Catch the Sun," a lab experiment that measures the heating power of solar energy on a thermometer. A key exercise calls for students to record their household energy use--kilowatt-hours of electricity, cubic feet of natural gas--on special grid sheets. In this way they can compare their energy use with the much smaller world average. Most students take to heart what they learn. Diane Molzahn, 13, reports that her family have "cut the use of most small appliances and have begun washing dishes by hand instead of using the machine." Another student, Eric Lamoe, 14, says that, at his urging, his family has weather-stripped the doors and changed many light bulbs to 25 watts. Adds Eric: "I don't use my hair dryer any more, and neither does my brother or my mom. It adds up to quite a bit."

Energy instruction in other cities is generally less formal, though the impact of student thinking has been striking. In the Los Angeles school system, teachers begin focusing on energy at the kindergarten level, urging kids to turn off lights and not to linger in front of an open refrigerator for long, languid looks. Chicago schools have for years been teaching environmental science, with emphasis on energy conservation. Mike Palatnik, a teacher at Sullivan High School, made an intriguing discovery: "Kids want cars and material things, particularly boys. They are often hard to reach. Girls, on the other hand, seem to have more guilt about wasting energy."

Chicago's downtown Metro High School has created a course in energy careers. Students pursue individual projects, such as assessing the effectiveness of the city's fuel use, and are aided by Shaeffer & Roland, an environmental management firm. Says Teacher Frances Vandervoort, grandly: "By 1980 there a will be 300,000 jobs in solar energy alone, and we are helping prepare our students for these opportunities." At suburban Evanston Township High School, an architectural drawing program includes the study of solar heating, wind generators and maximum use of insulation. At a recent science fair at Brooklyn's Roy Mann Intermediate School, there was an impressive array of energy projects. One seventh-grade student, Chris Bonagura, 13, built a working model of a solar-heated home. He was Inspired when he became cold one night on an environmental field trip. Says he: "I thought about heating and solar energy--no wasted coal or oil or garbage like that, you know. It's just the sun." At Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, N.J., Mike McGlue, head of the science department, helped set up an energy program. Says he: "We talk about students' homes--insulation, where the house should be placed, what number of B.T.U.s are lost with different types of insulating materials."

The Department of Energy distributes free teaching aids for schools. Among them are an impressive array of questionnaires accompanied by answer sheets. An example: a sheet showing three pictures of homes asks, "What's Wrong Here?" The sketches depict, among other things, open windows in the middle of winter, a running water faucet and one passenger in a car. For small kids, there are wall posters with cartoons showing what should be done to save: drive small cars, observe the 55-m.p.h. limit, keep the home heat below 70DEG and take showers rather than soaking in a tub full of hot water.

What does all this effort add up to? Dwight Morrow's McGlue put it best: "We hope that the next generation will lead us by the hand to a better understanding of our real energy needs. It's just a matter of transmitting knowledge as best we can as it becomes available."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.