The Rainforest: Earth at Risk Environmental Video Series.

This video is half political propaganda, half education, and it's coming to grades 5-12 near you. It's about what we could expect from MTV video jockey Kevin Seal's understanding of an ecosystem that is a bit more complex than your average piece of heavy metal music.

The damage this kind of stuff does is twofold. First, it encourages the idea that the rainforest is a simple system, fragile as a crystal bowl--broken once, gone forever. We get the old sweeping generalities about poor soils and all the life support being in the plants themselves. This is convenient misinformation to encourage people not to cut trees; it does not explain how many farmers make a good living on land cleared from the rainforest.

Second, it divides the world into rich bad guys and poor good guys with all the usual bogeymen. "Cattle ranchers benefit almost no one but themselves," it says. Do they really think the rancher's family processes, packages, and eats thousands of cows a year?

The famous Bronx Zoo, where so many first learn to appreciate animals and their habitat, lent its staff and high-school interns to this production and endorse the conclusions. This is a disservice to the rainforest, and to American students.

The video was adopted from Laura Tangley's Chelsea House book of the same name. Let's hope the book was better than the movie.