546 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



environmental interrelationships which are at play in every situation. 

 We must first teach environmental ecology to our teachers before 

 they can teach an integrated course in natural beauty to our children. 



E. G. SHERBURNE, Jr. I am heartily in favor of the aims of the 

 natural beauty program, but I feel that the panel on Education did 

 not sufficiently emphasize the difference between indoctrination and 

 education. I am referring to the suggestions regarding the teaching 

 of conservation in the schools. 



Conservation is, after all, based on an understanding of the basic 

 scientific principle of the interrelationship of all living things, and 

 the realization that man is himself an important part of the natural 

 environment. Conservation includes further understandings from 

 biology, chemistry, physics, geology and other fields. 



But while conservation has a substantial scientific element, it 

 also includes a point of view. The insertion of a point of view into 

 a school curriculum I feel verges on indoctrination. Since the 

 schools are under tremendous pressure from all sides to integrate 

 points of view into their curricula, I feel that this is something that 

 should be resisted, no matter how much I agree with the particular 

 point of view in question. 



I believe that the best understanding of conservation and com- 

 mitment to its goals will be derived from a sound education in the 

 various pertinent scientific disciplines, and not from classroom per- 

 suasion. For if the conservation philosophy cannot be rationally 

 arrived at, I for one would oppose it. 



The schools should and do teach science. I suggest that our efforts 

 should be aimed at helping them improve science education, con- 

 fident in the belief that out of a knowledge of science and out of a 

 contact with the natural environment will come the love of natural 

 beauty that we all should have. 



JOSEPH J. SHOMON. Because beauty is a quality of human percep- 

 tion which, for the most part, must be learned, it is imperative that 

 there emerge across America a great back-to-the-land movement for 

 learning, for enlightenment, and for nature appreciation. Only the 

 sensitive mind aware of what makes things naturally beautiful can 

 hope to advance beauty, can correct ugliness. Only a person who 

 understands nature and his role in the total environment, including 

 the importance of natural resources, can be expected to assume mean- 

 ingful citizenship responsibility in conservation and natural beauty 

 action programs. 



