JOHN TIERNEY: “If we want our children to be scientifically literate and get good jobs in the future, why are we spending precious hours in school teaching them to be garbage collectors? That’s the question that occurred to me after reading about the second-graders in West Virginia who fought for the right to keep recycling trash even after it became so uneconomical that public officials tried to stop the program. As my colleague Kate Galbraith reports, their teacher was proud of them for all the time they spent campaigning to keep the recycling program alive. . . . I’ve always thought of recycling as essentially a religious sacrament –a fine activity if pursued voluntarily, but not something that should be mandated or taught in public schools.”