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It All Starts With
the Kids – April 28,
2008
I’ve just begun to read a new book called
The Bridge at the Edge of the World
by James Gustave Speth (Yale University Press, 2008). It is subtitled
“Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability.”
The book’s message is that the Earth’s current crisis is caused by modern,
unquestioning, environmentally destructive growth-at-all-costs capitalism. Speth
calls what is happening “the Great Collision,” where the global economy is
crashing against the earth, creating enormous damage. Aside from the direct
results of global warming, he describes how we have plundered the earth’s
resources: Half the world’s tropical and temperate forests are now gone. The
rate of deforestation in the tropics continues at about an acre a second. About
half the wetlands and a third of the mangroves are gone. An estimated 90 percent
of the large predator fish are gone, and 75 percent of marine fisheries are now
overfished or fished to capacity. Twenty percent of the corals are gone, and
another 20 percent severely threatened. Species are disappearing at rates about
a thousand times faster than normal. Persistent toxic chemicals can now be found
by the dozens in all of us. And so on.
One of the things I appreciate and share is Speth’s
recognition that we need to attack the root of the problem in order to
reverse the destructive momentum...to create transformative change rather than
trading some emission credits here, protecting a fishery there and solving an environmental
problem elsewhere – although those products of mainstream environmentalism are
important efforts. The
other thing I appreciate is his understanding of the connections between environmental problems and other human
challenges such as health, freedom, peace, stability and community, although I would add
“education” to his list.
We need profound change in our values, culture and
worldviews. And I believe that fundamental level of change needs to start with
examining our attitudes toward children – how we birth them, educate them,
nurture their ability to think creatively and independently, respect their
rights, shape their values, learn from their instinctive kinship with the
natural world and with each other. When we get that right, we will have, I
believe, created the changes in ourselves that will allow us to proceed with the
transformative change that is required for our species to survive.
Posted: 2008/04/28 2:14 PM
Will it be the Economy or the Environment? – April 27,
2008
As the world economy
slows, I wonder if the current focus on the environment will suffer. Will an
economic downturn tempt companies to phase out their sustainability initiatives
and individuals to return to their old ways? There is certainly that risk. I
remember back in the late 1970s, just after Rolf and I launched Natural
Life, there was a so-called “energy crisis” provoked by the revolution in
Iran. U.S. President Jimmy Carter encouraged energy conservation and installed
solar panels on the roof of the White House, and we enjoyed increased
advertising revenues from a booming woodstove industry. However, those
woodstoves didn’t do much for the environment, nor did all those drivers idling
their cars for hours in gas station line-ups. Ronald Regan removed the solar
panels in 1986. And by the time the recession of 1981-82 was in full swing, it
seemed like everybody was back to their old non-conserving ways.
But I think this time around things may be different, given the
urgency of the consensus about climate change. In fact, a full-blown recession –
in spite of its short-term pain – might be the best thing that could happen
right now. Almost two years ago, in his review of the economics of climate
change, former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern warned that
international action needed to be taken immediately if we are to avoid the worst
impacts of global warming. His message was clear: We must act promptly or pay a
far higher economic price later.
So I’m hoping that the issues currently in the news, which range
from melting glaciers and declining fish stocks to the hoarding of rice and the
escalating price of wheat and oil, might be converging in a way that will
motivate individuals, companies and governments to maintain and extend this
embryonic focus on living within our means – both economic and ecological. If we
pay close enough attention, one of the lessons to be learned is that there are
limits to growth and that the growth-at-all-costs economic mentality is a sure
path to destruction.
Pursuing energy efficiency is one of the best ways to deal with
an economic downturn…and, obviously, has environmental benefits too. Continuing
their pursuit of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies would also
help companies create and maintain their green reputations in front a public
that I don’t think is going to stop paying attention. There is plenty of work to
be done on the technologies necessary to create and maintain a low-carbon
economy, so the dinosaur-like high-carbon oil economy companies might be
motivated to shift their focus in a way that would help both their bottom lines
and the Earth. And that should mean that we reach the end of the decade with
both the economy and environment in better shape than going in.
Posted: 2008/04/27 1:25 PM
Shakespeare Didn’t Blog – April 24, 2008
Although my unschooled
daughters were never taught to read and write, they both learned those skills
and both use them now in their personal and professional lives. I tend to credit
their lack of schooling for their talents in those realms, as well as for their
love of both reading and writing. However, they grew up in a pre-PC and
therefore pre-email and pre-text messaging world. And according to some
theories, that is why their communication skills are so strong.
A media release I received the other day is entitled
“Shakespeare Didn’t Blog: Author Says Texting and Testing Are Destroying Kids
Writing Style.” (The lack of a possessive apostrophe is the PR writer’s, not
mine.) The item being promoted is a new book called K.I.S.S. Keep It Short and
Simple, written by a former teacher named Jacquie Ream. She contends that text
messaging and the Internet are destroying the way our children are reading,
thinking and writing. “These kids aren’t learning to spell. They’re learning
acronyms and short hand,” says Ream, “Text messaging is destroying the written
word.” While she may have identified a problem, I disagree with where the blame
should be placed.
In the U.S., a National Center for Education Statistics study
reports only one out of four high school seniors is a proficient writer. A
College Board survey of the nation’s blue-chip companies found only two thirds
of their employees are capable writers. Trouble is, this isn’t a particularly
new phenomenon. For at least 25 years, I hired interns who couldn’t put a
sentence together, let alone a complete magazine article – and they were usually
college students, some in journalism programs! Despite a whole industry
dedicated to teaching reading and writing, the levels of functional illiteracy
in North America are huge – over 40 percent of adults in Canada can’t read the
directions on their medicine bottles or hazardous warning labels on products.
Many of them are over 40, speak English as their first language and went to at
least elementary school.
So let’s not wring our hands about the loss of the good old days
and blame modern technology for the problem. In fact, I dare say kids are more
motivated to read and write than they once were, now that they’re text
messaging, blogging, facebook/MySpace posting and researching online. (Neilson/NetRatings
reports the average 12- to 17-year-old visits more than 1,400 web pages a
month.) Sure, language will be changed dramatically by electronic
communications, and maybe the jargon will clutter it up and dumb it down a
bit…although I wonder if the effect will be much different than the slang we
used as teens. But I bet these kids have a good chance of becoming more
dedicated readers and writers because they are actually reading and writing
about real-life things that are important to them. Ream does note that critical
thinking – or perhaps, says I, thinking of any sort – is not a priority when
teachers are focused on teaching to standardized tests.
As for good old Will Shakespeare, his beautiful, flowing prose
might have been popular once upon a time – and still is to some who have the
patience to understand it in context – but in today’s world, it’s an acquired
taste. And I can’t imagine that being forced to study it in high school creates
a love of reading and writing in large numbers of teens. As someone whose four
decade-long writing career has been driven by a quest for succinctness, most
days I’d prefer to try and understand a text message than a passage of olde
English. (Better still, bring on a William Carlos Williams poem!)
Posted: 2008/04/24 2:51 PM
Happy
Earth Day – April 22, 2008
Must be Earth Day,
considering the number of press releases in my in-box about real green products,
pseudo green products, non-green products, tree plantings, and various other
announcements crafted to coincide with what has become the Hallmark card holiday
of the environment. One friend with whom I spoke earlier today was astonished to
learn that I – cynic that I am – am not an Earth Day basher. Oh yes, I know it’s
fashionable to diss the almost 40-year-old (not 20 as one newspaper claimed
today) charity as being hopelessly behind the times, too corporate, etc. Sure,
I’ve seen the oil industry-funded treeplantings and we ran a Toyota-funded Earth
Day Foundation ad in Natural Life a few issues ago and I noted the Reclaim Earth
Day protest last Sunday (as if there weren’t enough things to fix without having
environmentalists fighting among themselves, but that’s an old story). I guess
all of that makes Earth Day a bit less than cutting edge. But I don’t think it’s
irrelevant…any more than encouraging people to turn out their lights for an hour
on a Saturday evening in March is irrelevant. It won’t solve global warming, but
it’s a symbol, and a long-lasting one at that.
And we still need symbols, I’m afraid, lest we become complacent
that we have fixed the problem. Also in my in-box this morning was a press
release from the International Climate Science Coalition. Today, they issued the
Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change, which calls on world leaders to
“reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as An
Inconvenient Truth.” All taxes, regulations and other interventions intended
to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide should “be abandoned forthwith,” conclude
the signatories. Aha, says I. Something fishy here. And sure enough, about ten
seconds worth of research shows that this is the product of the predictable
motley crew of climate change deniers, including energy industry lobbyist Tom
Harris and the notorious Dr. Tim Ball. Ball claims to be a leading climate
change scientist, but his credentials appear to be less than he claims. Hhe and
his cronies are, to one degree or another, funded by the oil and gas industry
and organized by the same PR firms hired by the tobacco industry to try and
convince us that smoking doesn’t cause cancer. The non-profit Vancouver-based
website DeSmogBlog
has uncovered much about these people and the ICSC and other similar
“organizations” and phony grassroots coalitions that are sometimes called
“Astroturf.” (Just go to the site and do a keyword search.) The site, which is
devoted to combating what it says is “a well-funded and highly organized public
relations campaign” against climate change, says this tactic is common, pointing
to a 1998 anti-Kyoto petition signed by about 17,000 global scientists, most of
whom turned out to have industry backing, weak credentials or both. Nevertheless
some media outlets will unquestioningly publish today’s press release. And some
uninformed people – including lots for whom lifestyle change is too much trouble
– will choose to believe what they read. But heck, even George W. Bush no longer
denies the scientific realities of climate change! As I said, Happy Earth Day.
Posted: 2008/04/22 12:40 PM
Threadbare Words – April 20, 2008
I was recently asked to
speak about the “pedagogy of homeschooling.” I declined because I saw the phrase
as an oxymoron. The definition of the word “pedagogy” involves
teacher-centeredness, with students as recipients of directed learning rather
than being in control of and making decisions about their education. However,
the ensuing discussion and my later ruminations reminded me that relatively few
homeschooling families see themselves as part of a counterculture that is
resisting the dominant education system. And many of those that do tend to
define themselves in other ways, like “radical unschooling” or my preference
“life learning,” or even the less confrontational “home-based education.” That
leaves “homeschooling” for those who school at home. Doesn’t it?
That’s why I’m puzzled that so many homeschoolers – especially
in the U.S. – persist in wearing that threadbare terminology when it has long
ceased to fit. The result is a seemingly never-ending argument about what should
or shouldn’t be defined as homeschooling. I understand the concern about loss of
freedom that results from including charter schoolers, correspondence schoolers
and those enrolled in public systems for other reasons under the homeschooler
umbrella. One of the concerns is that the powers-that-be will force “homeschools”
to be more like regular schools. But I think that will be a problem until
secular homeschoolers, unschoolers, radical unschoolers, life learners,
home-based educators and all the rest stop lumping themselves in with the
school-at-homers. And that includes allowing patriarchal right wing
organizations like HSLDA to speak for them. The current situation in California,
about which I wrote last month, is a good example. Homeschooling there is legal
but unregulated, as it is in many places, give or take a regulation or two. But
homeschooling is much more regulated than it used to be before the
fear-mongering, create-a-problem-so-you-can-solve-it-and-sell-memberships HSLDA
came along.
What does “homeschooling” mean anyway? Maybe it simply means
what it says: schooling at home. If that’s the case, how our family learned
decades ago wasn’t homeschooling and, further, must have been illegal. After
all, the law here says families must provide “satisfactory instruction at home
or elsewhere.” Aside from the fact that there is no definition provided of
“satisfactory” (and I’m pretty confident there won’t be because if they defined
it for homeschooling, I’m pretty sure unhappy schoolschooling parents would be
calling their lawyers to apply it to their situations), we didn’t instruct our
kids about much, if anything. That lack of instruction is why I have a hard time
identifying with the term “homeschooler.” (And why I have decided to decline
most media requests for interviews unless I can be sure we’re speaking the same
language.)
So maybe the term isn’t being misused after all. Maybe it’s just
evolved…or been co-opted. I believe that it’s usually a good thing – a sign of
progress – when a formerly uncommon term becomes common. In the same way,
although I abhor the meaningless misuse of words “natural” and “green” and
“eco-friendly” in this age of environmental greenwashing, I am glad people care
enough about the environment for marketers to use the terms.
Unfortunately, words that we use to label things are shorthand,
conjuring up a whole set of attitudes and practices, which people use to slot
and pass quick judgment. So if, in its popularity, a term has become
misconstrued or otherwise problematic, why not find another? I’ve always felt
that it’s a bad idea to define something by saying what it’s not. The type of
education – the philosophy of life – that I call “life learning” involves no
school. And who cares that it’s sometimes home-centered? That’s not very
descriptive of the values involved. In my opinion, we’re long passed the time
when we should find better terminology that doesn’t signal a view of education
and of children that maintains the same oppression and powerlessness found in
schools.
Posted: 2008/04/20 5:45 PM
 When
the Green is Just Veneer – April 12, 2008
The cover story for the
upcoming May/June issue of
Natural Life magazine is about greenwashing, which has become an
epidemic as concern for the Planet has grown. The term refers to the act of
misleading consumers regarding the environmental benefits of a product or
service. And there are some pretty nasty tales in the article (which I wrote).
One of them involves a number of leading so-called “natural” and “organic”
personal care and cleaning products. The watchdog group Organic Consumers
Association commissioned a study of these products and found that many of them
contained the carcinogen 1,4-Dioxane, which is a byproduct of a process known as
ethoxylation, a cheap short-cut companies us to provide mildness to harsh
ingredients and requires the petrochemical Ethylene Oxide. The fallout is still
underway, but it’s messy.
However, the fact that there are increasing numbers of
businesses trying to present themselves as green when they’re not is, I think,
an inevitable growing pain in the move towards real sustainability. Yes, these
greenwashers are exploiting people’s honest desire to be responsible consumers
and environmental friendliness is often little more than the sales angle du
jour. But if there is an upside to this, it’s that companies are competing for
customers based on their perceived greenness! And that can be seen as both a
sign of and a precursor to progress.
Until we live in a perfectly green world, the answer to this
conundrum lies partly in balance and in understanding that toxicity is a tricky
issue and that ridding our lives of all toxins and pollutants is almost
impossible. A huge part of the solution is for governments to create better
standards and labeling regulations…and to enforce them. Furthermore, as author
and green business guru Joel Makower points out, we all need to be as hard on
ourselves as we are on the companies we criticize. In his blog,
Two Steps Forward, he writes, “While it’s good that we maintain high
standards for companies seeking to claim environmental leadership, I can’t help
but ponder the hypocrisy of it all: how much more we expect of companies than of
ourselves.”
So while we’re on the lookout for greenwash, let’s all examine
our own lives to be sure we are doing all that we can to address environmental
problems…without holding others to a higher standard than we have set for
ourselves.
Posted: 2008/04/12 2:20 PM
Downshifting For You and the Environment – April 12, 2008
Saturday, April 19 to
Friday, April 25 is, according to a UK environmental awareness campaign,
National Downshifting Week. The event, now in its fourth year, has been
elevated to international status this year, writes founder and sustainable
living author and broadcaster
Tracey Smith. This non-profit campaign encourages participants to “slow down
and green up,” to live more sustainably and to create a better work/life
balance. (That is also known as “Earth Week.”)
The campaign’s website lists many simple living suggestions and
people are encouraged to try one a day throughout the week. They include: plant
something in the garden to cultivate and eat; eliminate three non-essential
purchases; cut up a credit card and focus on living within your means; cook a
simple meal using fresh, locally sourced ingredients and enjoy it together at
the table; turn off the television, turn on the radio, play a few games and
talk. There is also a guide to chart personal progress called “The Downshifting
Manifesto,” which is available to read or print responsibly from the website.
Of course, like the recent Earth Hour, doing these things for
just one week will not solve global warming. But it can be symbolic of the need
for change and it might even inspire people to embark on some permanent changes
in their own lives and to agitate for more broadly-based change by governments
and the corporate community. So happy downshifting!
Posted: 2008/04/12 12:51 PM
Are
Schools Learning From Homeschoolers? – April 5, 2008
Unschoolers are often
frowned upon when they suggest there are educational benefits to reading,
playing games, engaging in conversation and common tasks like cooking. But now,
those tasks have apparently been blessed by the Toronto board of education! Our
local newspaper reported last week that after consultation with “thousands of
parents, teachers, principals and community members”…what, no children?...the
board intends to create a new homework policy. And the draft policy says, among
other things, that “students in kindergarten should have no homework other than
reading with or talking to their parents. And up to Grade 2…homework should
consist mostly of playing games, having discussions or even cooking with family
members.” The cooking recommendation is based on the idea that cooking covers
many subject areas, including mathematics, literacy, reading, talking and
nutrition. Imagine that.
Posted: 2008/04/05 12:39 PM
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