Science educators often skim off the top, as it were. They regale young minds with the marvels of science while remaining silent about the problems to which it has contributed.

When I was in grade school as a member of a different younger generation, we had routine drills in which we took cover under our desks. This was to prepare us to act quickly in case the Russians decided to nuke our playground.

No one ever explained how this pathetic maneuver would save us, but it seemed to make the teachers feel better.

Today's youngsters are treated to a different menu of menaces. Their nuclear hazard is more likely to come in the form of a dirty nuclear device detonated by a terrorist instead of from a Russian plane or missile.

Then there is global warming, nuclear waste, environmental degradation, polluted air, water and soil. There are acidified oceans, melting polar ice, oceanic dead zones, dying coral reefs, vanishing species, on and on, all of which are due in some measure to the downside of science and technology.

The mantra that only science can save us from these perils rings hollow to many youngsters, since it was largely science and technology that bequeathed them in the first place.

As anthropologist and educator Loren Eiseley put it,

We have lived to see the technological progress that was hailed in one age as the savior of man become the horror of the next.  (Continued At https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-dossey/spiritual-living-do-we-li_b_609385.html )