EPA Teaching Guide Tells Non-English Speakers to Spy on Neighbors, Workplace

The Environmental Protection Agency has published a teaching guide designed to teach adult non-English speakers the language with a curriculum on environmentalism, including a homework assignment telling students to “observe” their neighbors, school and workplace to see if recycling is taking place. In the “Teach English, Teach About the Environment,” under the heading “Civic Integration Activity” in the beginner’s level Lesson Plan One on recycling, the following questions are asked:  Ask students to observe whether their neighbors recycle their waste. Ask students to observe whether the school or their workplace recycles waste material. Ask at the following class what they observed. In the same lesson, the homework – or “home support activity” – is to calculate how much each student adds to the “waste stream.”  The introduction to the classes for beginner, intermediate and advanced non-English speaking student stated:  “As a teacher of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), you know that your classes are extremely popular with immigrants and long-term visitors to the United States. “These classes provide not only the opportunity to learn English but can serve as a portal through which many newcomers pass as a first step in integrating themselves into their new communities and American society,” the introduction stated.  A “Note to Instructors” advised them to teach vocabulary using “environmentally-related words.”...more

Is this education or indoctrination?   Besides, why is the EPA involved in education anyway?