Mining is brought into the classrooms of some counties
BARTOW -- Amber Purvis of Bartow said she learned all about the phosphate industry from her fourth-grade teacher.
On a field trip, the 13-year-old said her elementary school class went to a youth fair and dug in a pile of sand for fossilized sharks' teeth that mining representatives had hidden. That's what she knew about the phosphate mines surrounding Bartow and other Polk County towns.
"It's OK," Amber said about phosphate industry and the mountains of phosphogypsum, or mining waste, that lies on the outskirts of Bartow.
For the last four years, the Florida Institute for Phosphate Research has provided two-week seminars on phosphate and science education for kindergarten to 12th-grade teachers in Polk, Hardee and Hillsborough counties. The courses are designed for all educational disciplines.
The institute, known by its acronym FIPR, was created in 1978 and is funded through a severance tax on phosphate mining. The institute was created to conduct scientific research, and the FIPR staff views itself as mandated to encourage education on the issues surrounding phosphate.
"The lessons offered at this June 2002 workshop were developed with the help of the Polk County school administrators and teachers who have studied the phosphate industry and the local environment," the introduction to FIPR's master curriculum packet states.
Mary Ellen Murphy, FIPR communications director and a wordsmith on the master curriculum packet, described the FIPR's educational program as a "work in progress." Each year, she said, FIPR staff adds and refines the materials it provides teachers.
FIPR provides teachers with a wide range of materials, such as textbooks like "Bottle Biology," which allows students to learn and experiment with soda bottles and other recyclables. Another text, "Teaching Chemistry with Toys" introduces grammar school students to chemistry.
Other materials are provided by phosphate and fertilizer companies. Those materials stress the importance of phosphate to agriculture.
Ironically, the phosphate industry's educational materials often celebrate fossils and Florida's paleontological past, despite the fact the mining process includes grinding fossilized rock to the consistency of sand. Nothing is ever mentioned on what mining does to the fossils.
"There is a screening process," said FIPR educational coordinator Lisa Jap-Tjong, explaining how large fossilized remains are sifted out by mining operations from the rest of the smaller fossilized materials.
Some of the written educational materials appear incomplete, such as a section devoted to the natural habitats of Central Florida. The materials offer teachers detailed insights on the local environment, but it lacks any similar description of habitats on reclaimed land.
Both Murphy and Jap-Tjong said the written materials are supplemented with field trips and lectures by FIPR research scientists. Jap-Tjong said the field trips to the mines often generate lively discussions on the impacts of mining.
"The experience is more than what's in the writing," Jap-Tjong said. On field trips to mining sites, she said she's heard teachers exclaim, "Wow, look at the destruction."
"The text doesn't do the educational experience justice," Jap-Tjong said.
The curriculum also includes a section on the "environmental quality, safety and public health" in which many of the environmental issues appear to be solved, minimalized or already addressed.
Murphy said that section was a first attempt to address the environmental issues and will be revised and improved. The section was added, Murphy said, at the request of teachers who wanted more on the issues than they read in newspapers.
You can e-mail Steve Reilly at reilly@sun-herald.com
By STEVE REILLY
Staff Writer