The very premise of this exercise is flawed, because it puts students in the position of the coal company, instead of the coal miner. It is designed to “illustrate the costs associated with the mining of coal,” but it only focuses on the costs incurred by the company, not the costs of coal mining on the workers themselves: including health, safety, and quality of life. It creates an unrealistic view of how hard mine owners have it. For instance, it gives students the impression that land reclamation is such a burden on mine owners, and it is hard for them to make a profit; when in reality, the only reason land reclamation seems like a burden is because coal companies have enjoyed hundreds of years of mining (and plenty of profits) without having to deal with environmental degradation, and now they are being forced to do the right thing. Students are given an arbitrary $19 to buy land and equipment, they have to pay $1 a minute for labor, and each chocolate chip mined only yields $2. How accurate are these percentages? Is it really that hard to make a profit? Allowing the American Coal Foundation, which is supported by “coal producers and manufacturers of mining equipment and supplies” (from their website), to design your lesson plans is tricky, because they are never going to give students the other side of the story. I think Mark Nowak is well aware of this, which is why he juxtaposes this lesson with stories of actual mine disasters.
I thought one of the most powerful moments in the book was when we hear the overview of the lesson, that it “helps to illustrate the costs associated with the mining of coal,” and then on the next page we get the anecdote about the mine owner trying to bribe reporters and relatives so they won’t tell anyone about a fatal accident. I thought about the under-the-table costs of mining, like bribery and lobbying legislators to pass favorable laws, and I wondered how happy the American Coal Federation would be if we included that in the lesson plan.
It also, as an exercise designed for younger kids that Nowak appropriates, seems to imply that all of the worrying over cost and profit is quite childish, that mine owners are really just big kids trying to mine combustible chocolate chips out of a really large cookie.
That is right! Nowak wants readers to discover this flaw, in which anything related to the bad side effects of working in coal mines were hidden everywhere on purpose. This fact includes lesson plans where the beneficiaries of this policy do not want anybody to know the real bad situations that the miners face in order to make a huge capital at the expense of large segment of humanity. It does not stop at this point. There are many people, who are victims of this policy, just as miners but through other nefarious practices, which include various aspects of life.
I happened upon your blog while refining the coal mining activity for my high school classroom. While I find your interpretation quite intriguing, I wonder if any of you have ever been in a classroom of children – no matter what grade or age – to observe this lab being carried out. Based on the rhetoric here, I’m surmising this has never been the case. At no point during this lesson does it matter who students are representing during the lab or that the miners do dangerous work that puts their health at risk. The reclamation process is both clear and necessary when teaching from an environmental perspective and quite honestly, profits are not entirely the goal of this hands-on lab exercise. Not having observed this lab carried out in the classroom allows you to spew your opinions on how having the American Coal Foundation design lessons is irresponsible teaching, when in reality you simply have no earthly clue of the demands both of teaching a topic that most students would otherwise be extremely uninterested in knowing ANYTHING about and the inherent pressure in capturing student attention through hands-on, engaging activities. Quite honestly, there are so many critics of education quick to put in their two cents when in reality, few of these individuals would be equipped to handle the profession. Before you judge, walk a day in a teacher’s shoes… I’m certain you’d feel very differently about the “flawed” lesson you trash in your review.
I see now the phrase “irresponsible teaching” is harsh, and probably unfair, so I am changing it. I certainly did not mean to trash teachers, in fact many of us in the class are planning on teaching after college. We were commenting on Mark Nowak’s book Coal Mountain Elementary where he co-opts the lesson for artistic, and maybe political, reasons.
Ben, There’s a great deal of research about the agendas of the lesson plans developed by various corporate interests. The thrust of what Stacy argues above — that this could be the foundation of a great lesson that introduces students to tensions between energy and environmental policy — is true. But, Stacey, how can you ignore the deep “bias” in the provided lesson plan, which actively discourages critical thinking about the human costs. This could be difficult to discuss in an elementary K-5 classroom, but not impossible. Don’t good teachers introduce critical thinking opportunities when teaching complex matter even in K-5 classrooms (Discovery/Conquest of America; Slavery and Civil War, etc.).
So I feel like I should qualify my response with a couple things:
1. I did not realize this was a critical opine based on a book when I commented. That might have guided my comments in a slightly different direction;
2. The human costs you keep bringing up must be directly related to the discourse in the book, where my comments above relate more to the critical eye of outsiders looking in to the world of education and because they have received an education feel they know what teachers should be doing that they aren’t currently.
3. In a classroom situation, the critical thinking that results from this relates more to “why should I care” about mining AT ALL than it does to the human costs of the miners themselves. In terms of bias in the activity in question, in all honesty, without reading the book I can’t comment on bias because I use this activity to engage.
Interestingly enough, one of my favorite comments from my class this morning was, “this is a lot harder than I thought it would be” followed shortly by another student asking if every little crumb had to be reclaimed. The critical thinking here is whatever is relevant to where the student is at the moment. I follow the activity up with questions and a lengthy discussion on mining regulations and safety concerns but all in all, if the activity engages a student and helps them realize that mining is both more difficult than they ever imagined, and also is necessary to obtain the minerals and fuels they demand based on their consumption habits, and it is these things that change their “entitlement mentality”, bias or no bias, I’d say that’s a win.
Stacy: Mark Nowak’s Book “Coal Mountain Elementary” includes documentation from the Sego mining disaster, many similar news events in China in recent years, and the American Coal Foundation lesson plans on Coal Flowers and Cookie Mining. The book is classified as documentary poetry; it makes a very strong argument about the need for more attention to the human costs of coal extraction, particularly in terms of mine safety. (It doesn’t go into other political issues such as climate change or environmental issues within mining communities etc. specifically.)
But whether you come at it from that perspective or simply the perspective of what motivates various groups to produce lesson plans, there’s room for some critical thinking and concern.
Coal in particular played an immense role in the development of US industry, as it is now doing in China, and continues to do to a lesser extent in the US. The part of PA where I live and teach, as well as WV, are obviously settled and developed because of coal deposits, RRs, and the industry that followed.
However, if one were teaching the history of this, there would certainly be some attention to the broader context (historical) and current implications. So, for instance, in links with the development of union organizing and labor rights (as minors were notoriously treated in the 19th and early 20th centuries). Controversy continues over strip mining or mountain top removal in WV. Many streams in Western PA continue to run red and are unfishable, etc. due to drainage from mines closed 50 or more years ago.
ACF is certainly free to publish what they want. And teachers should have the choice to adopt and adapt such lesson plans. But it’s not unreasonable to ask questions about the agenda of any group providing such plans. ACF is not an educational association, right? They share a few lesson plans as part of their broader public relations strategy. Call it informative, call it propaganda …etc. opinions may vary. But their lesson plans look a little different to me than say, this one from reprinted in the New York Times blog:
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/01/04/mine-over-matter/?_r=0
Or this one from Explore PA history:
http://explorepahistory.com/viewLesson.php?id=1-D-50
ACF naturally wants people to think about these challenges from a management perspective. What does doing so obscure? I think it strongly precludes certain other kinds of questions.