The Bangor Daily News recently reported that the “timber industry” had launched a new program this summer that would take teachers on “… all-expense-paid tours…” of their woodlands and mills. The industry is trying to expose more teachers to the “Project Learning Tree” curruculum, a cathechism they hope will be taught not only in the elementary and middle schools but also in Maine high schools.

I recall that past industry attempts to meddle with our teachers’ and students’ beliefs failed miserably. In 1995, Dennise Tompkins, public relations man for the Maine Forest Products Council, took quite a drumming after the BDN published his highly critical review of the students’ essays “In Opposition to Clear-Cutting.”

That line of attack backfired and the students went to Augusta to further their protest before the Conservation Committee. Even then, a few paper industry sycophants on the committee tried to prevent the students from being heard but more thoughtful members prevailed, and the students were allowed to express their views to remaining membes.

After such amateurish bunglings, paper companies should have learned to stay from teachers, students and their curriculums. It wil be long time before they convince our students that it is all right to decimate thousands of acres of our natural resources year after year and then move on when there is no forest left. While at the same time the teachers can see the paper industry is downsizing, closing mills and moving out of the country. The BDN reports that the state is financing chip mills for the paper industries and the governor is building a cargo plant so they can ship ever-increasing amounts of logs and millions of tons of hips to mills in foreign lands.

No, our teachers are well aware they will not be taking any airplane flights in the St. John River area where they might see vast areas of clear-cuts or to the Haynesville woods where over the years our Forest Service has allowed the forest there to be devastated right under their nose. I have faith that our teachers will not fall for any false indoctrination programs or slick “curriculums” the timber industry tries to foist upon them. Paul Hanson Argyle