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The Division of Education, Department of Conservation, has been actively 
engaged for more than a year, now, in the "environmental education" field--- 
and this fact is entirely overlooked by this article when it makes the flat 
statement contained in the third Paragraph on Page 8, 
I agree with Paragraph 4. 
Statements in the bottom paragraph on Page 8 are, for the most part, untrue. 
The Film Library in the Department of Conservation, Division of Education, has a 
total of about 160 film titles, nearly 600 prints, and services more than 1,000 
requests a month with films that are viewed by as many as 50,000 persons per 
month. In addition, there are four branch film libraries in southern Illinois 
operated by the Division of Forestry, Department of Conservation. Film library 
services, while kept very busy fulfilling requests, are adequate to take care of 
demand, 
The Department of Conservation, Division of Education, has served, I believe, 
admirably as a resource and backup agency for the Superintendent of Public 
Instruction during the past year. The main difficulty we have observed has been 
that the latter agency has been in the throes of reorganization following the 
changeover from Superintendent Page to Superintendent Bakalis. Nevertheless, our 
"Resource Series" of texts on fish, forestry, game and soils management, authored 
within the Department of Conservation, has been widely and extensively utilized 
by OSPI through the school systems of the state, and the Division of Education 
has produced the materials on selection of the State Tree for dissemination to 
the school systems in compliance with SR38 of the 77th General Assembly. So the 
sweeping, flat statements at the top of Page 9 are without foundation. 
I disagree with the "second proposal" as outlined at top of Page 9, With no 
more systems research, or programming than Mrs. Kelly describes, I can't understand 
her diagnosis of "needs" for the conservation education effort in OSPI. Indeed, 
OSPI is certainly not in agreement that this is the need. That is the reason that 
a State Task Force is now underway---to determine what Illinois needs in the 
categories of criteria, guidelines, personnel, etc. for conservation, or environmental 
education. 
We need to know not only what to teach, but how to teach it, who to teach it 
to, etc.---and how much staff will be necessary not only in OSPI and the Department 
of Conservation, but also within the school systems. These are problems that 
Mrs. Kelly does not consider in her second proposal. 
The paragraph in middle of Page 9 illustrates the superficiality of Mrs. Kelly's 
thesis. She does not mention the Division of Education, and its work of the past 
year with OSPI, nor does she write here that in the Division of Education there are 
four photographers, one of whom is a cinematrographer, and that our negotiations 
with OSPI include talks and proposals for mutual television programming with their 
Office of Media Programming. 
I will agree with her that much remains to be done here, to actively effect 
operative programs that will have meaningful results) statewide. Two factors are 
