Pint-Size Eco-Police, Making Parents Proud and Sometimes Crazy
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/nyregion/10green.html Friday
10/10 NY Times
The good news for me in this occasionally even funny article is how
many different educational influences now seem to be moving kids in
more sustainable direction (see excerpt below) , and the fact that
they may become a significant "bottom-up" way of affecting parents'
behavior.
Elan
Excerpt:
They learn this stuff everywhere. In the summer, the Pixar film
"Wall-E" served up an ecological parable of a planet so punished that
it had to be abandoned. The Girl Scouts recently added patches
including "Environmental Health," "Get With the Land," "Earth Pact"
and "Water Drop." Scholastic, the global children's publishing,
education and media company, has teamed up with the American Museum
of Natural History to create Web sites and magazines about climate
change and other environmental issues.
A Scholastic message board where children share eco-friendly tips,
called Save the Planet, has had three million page views in the past
year.
And school districts across the country are adding lessons on the
environment to their curriculums in many subject areas, as well as
enforcing idle-free zones in school driveways, switching to
plant-based cleaners, doing away with pesticides and, in some places,
installing solar panels.
In the Byram Hills School District in Armonk, N.Y., middle-school
teachers plan to roll out new material related to the environment
starting in January.
"We're trying to integrate it into anything where it naturally fits,"
said Jackie Taylor, the district's superintendent. "It might be in a
math lesson. How much water are you really using? How can you tell?
Teachers look for avenues in almost everything they teach."
Katie Ginsberg, co-founder and executive director of the Children's
Environmental Literacy Foundation, a nonprofit group in Chappaqua,
N.Y., has trained hundreds of teachers from Massachusetts to New
Jersey in issues of sustainability and environmental science. More
than 1,500 students attended the group's annual expo, Students for a
Sustainable Future, at Pace University this spring.
"In 2002, the environmental education children were getting was very
isolated," Ms. Ginsberg said. "It was emphasized mainly on Earth Day
and an occasional field trip to a nature center. We started looking
for different paradigms of environmental education around the world."
--
Elan Shapiro
Sustainable Tompkins Community Partnership Coordinator
Sustainable Living Associates, Principal
Frog's Way B&B
211 Rachel Carson Way
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-275-0249 607-592-8402 Cell
"We must be the change we want to see in the world"
Mohandas Gandhi
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