For Rachel Carson admirers, it has not been a silent spring. Theyâ??ve been celebrating the centennial of her birthday with paeans to her saintliness. A new generation is reading her book in school â?? and mostly learning the wrong lesson from it.
If students are going to read â??Silent Springâ? in science classes, I wish it were paired with another work from that same year, 1962, titled â??Chemicals and Pests.â? It was a review of â??Silent Springâ? in the journal Science written by I. L. Baldwin, a professor of agricultural bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin.