It was, he now says, ``beyond common sense to eliminate the only single focus for environmental issues (in high schools) at a time when the world is in an environmental crisis.’’

Puk is  a professor and chair of the Department of Lifelong Learning at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.

Horrified that the decision was made after scant consultation and with no warning of what the ministry was planning, and appalled at the foreseeable consequences, he made a formal request that the Ministry of Education be made subject to the Environmental Bill of Rights (EBR), just as 13 other government ministries are.

If he had been successful, his next step would have been to ask the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario to review the ministry’s decision. But he wasn’t successful.

His request went to the Ministry of the Environment, which administers the EBR, and was denied. It said few if any policies or decisions of the Ministry of Education would have an environmental effect, so there was no need for the EBR to apply. Besides, it said, if people had concerns, they could write to the minister.

Last September, in his annual report, the Environmental Commissioner politely, but firmly, condemned the ministry’s response.

The ministry does indeed make decisions affecting the environment, he said. And ``the right to mail a letter to the minister is not a reasonable replacement for the right to request a review under the EBR.’’

He pointed out that ``there is a critical need for Ontario’s public to understand complex environmental issues.’’

And a right of review would be a good thing because ``currently there is no transparent mechanism available to hold the Ministry of Education accountable for environmental education.’’

The ministry claims that its decision doesn’t take anything away from students because environmental issues are integrated into other subjects and taught throughout the curriculum.

But as Puk points out, that’s nonsense. After a year of research, he published a study last spring showing that ``integration watered down, not strengthened,’’ environmental teaching.

And now the worst is happening: university students enrolled in faculties of education are not signing up for environmental courses because the courses don’t count as a credit toward a ``teachable’’ subject any more. They need to graduate with two teachable subjects in order to qualify for teaching in a high school. Environmental science used to be one of 15 or 20 such subjects.

So faculties of education will be turning out teachers unqualified to deal with environmental issues. And high schools will be graduating students who won’t know the difference between an E-coli bacteria and an endocrine system.

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto is already planning to scrap its environmental program as a result. The education faculty at Western University in London appears to be undecided as to what to do. But Puk’s faculty at Lakehead has decided it will continue with its program despite the province’s decision to scrap environmental science.

In his report, the Environmental Commissioner urged the government to reverse itself and make the Ministry of Education subject to the EBR. But there has been no response to the request.

Meanwhile, there’s a public inquiry under way which is examining how citizens can be protected against environmental disasters, and it seems to me that it ought to be interested in Puk’s research and in the Environmental Commissioner’s report, because preventing disasters depends on the cornerstone of an aware and informed public. And what better way to get informed citizens than by graduating informed students?

The inquiry, by the way, is at Walkerton, where six unsuspecting people died from water contaminated with E-coli 157.