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Welcome to these regular musings, meanderings, wonderings and wanderings by Wendy Priesnitz. Archives - March, 2005 Doom-Mongering or Wake-Up Call? – March 31, 2005 The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, released yesterday, warns that 15 of 24 global ecosystems are in decline and that the harmful consequences of this degradation could grow much worse in the next 50 years. Hardly a lightweight assessment, the 2,500-page UN report is a synthesis of the work of about 1,300 researchers from 95 countries. It is being hailed as the most comprehensive survey ever into the natural systems that sustain life on Earth. UN Undersecretary Hans van Ginkel says the assessment reveals a consensus among the world’s social and natural scientists. Dr. Walter Reid, one of the report’s authors told reporters yesterday, “Clearly, the dual trends of continuing degradation of most ecosystem services and continuing growth in demand for these same services cannot continue...The assessment shows that over the next 50 years, the risk is not of some global environmental collapse, but rather a risk of many local and regional collapses in particular ecosystem services. We already see those collapses occurring – fisheries stocks collapsing, dead zones in the sea, land degradation undermining crop production, species extinctions.” Nevertheless, the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute – which describes itself as being “dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government” – calls the report “Malthusian alarmism”. Claims CEI Senior Fellow Iain Murray in a written statement, “They’re at it again. This is simply the latest in a series of doom-mongering underestimates of resources coupled with a stubborn refusal to recognize the role of human ingenuity in solving such problems. The public has grown tired of these Malthusian malcontents constantly crying wolf, which is probably why the public no longer ranks the environment in the top ten issues it is concerned about.” CEI
founder Fred L. Smith, Jr. once worked as a policy analyst at the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, so he should know better. Or maybe
that’s why he doesn’t. As the report clearly laid out, ignoring
those warning signs because they might harm the economy won’t make
them go away…but it will surely damage the very economy the CEI so
worries about. Learning Neatness – March 21, 2005 Well! I have been ducking a firestorm of complaints ever since the article was published. We’re telling mom to be a doormat, wrote one irate reader. It’s not difficult to make the kids pick-up, said another. There is a need to address the parent’s resentments, according to one woman, if the family isn’t to live in a pigsty. Another woman wrote about having grown up in a household with a maid who picked up after the family and how “wrong and twisted” she has come to think that was. “What on earth were my parents thinking?” she cried. “Did they even care enough to think about it at all?” Whew. We appear to have unearthed a lot of deep feelings, including those about cleanliness and our roles as women and parents! I’m pretty sure the discussion will continue in the pages of Life Learning (we try to print all the letters we receive that include first and last names, plus the city where you live)...or in this blog if you are not a Life Learning reader. But I have to ask why we can trust that our kids will learn arithmetic on their own but can’t trust them to learn how to clean up messes. Why do these readers accept that real learning does not happen under coercion but feel the need to coerce their children to pick up after themselves? Why are we making a distinction between academic and life skills? One reader, who seems less stressed than some about the
article in question, sent along this quotation for my quote
collection:
“Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more
deadly in the long run.” ~ Mark Twain. The Learning Journey – March
17, 2005 In the same way, an education is not a destination,
but a journey. We commonly speak of the importance of “getting an
education”, of “finishing school”, of a person being educated or
not. But I do not believe that we become educated any more than we grow
up! There is always something
to learn…and, in fact, many important lessons are not learned until
mid-life or older. An education is not a destination, but a journey –
one that begins at birth and continues until we die (or even after,
depending upon your spiritual beliefs!). Suburban
Angst – March 13, 2005 Unfortunately, the daily news seems to present more negative than positive action. Our provincial government has adopted a greenbelt plan in an attempt to promote better land use, but the development industry is working hard to overturn the initiative, trying to persuade us that sprawl is good, that commuting is fun and that global warming isn’t happening. Even farmers’ groups are upset because they won’t be able to sell off their land for development when they retire! In a neighborhood on the edge of the city, the fire department recently called off a meeting when more than 1,000 people tried to cram into a room with a capacity of 450. The purpose of this meeting? To protest the expansion of a commuter rail line. Even though the threat of major lifestyle change turns many people into ostriches, it is becoming harder and harder to escape the news about the problems with suburban living. Research worldwide is showing that fleeing to the edge of the city is not as good for one’s health as originally thought, due to the lack of exercise created by the sprawling design of suburbs, the stress of commuting on jammed highways, and the air pollution created by those commuters. A major shift is underway, notwithstanding the number of heads in the sand. In North American cities like mine (and yes, we just moved here from the country three years ago), downtown condo and infill residential construction is booming. Planners are changing their minds about density ratios, which are still much lower here than in Europe and Asia. For those who don’t want to move back downtown, there is a phenomenon called The New Urbanism. This is the idea that suburbs can be built (or retrofitted) as walkable, compact, complete mixed-use communities, which include housing, workplaces, shops, entertainment, schools, etc., all within easy walking distance of each other. These initiatives and
many more need to be encouraged. As author and commentator on the
suburban fiasco James Howard Kunstler says in The End of Suburbia,
“We’re
literally stuck up a cul-de-sac in a cement SUV without a fill-up.” So
no matter how loud suburbanites cry about the bill of goods they’ve
been sold, we’d better all do something about it fast. Slow Learning – March 6, 2005 That’s why I prefer a definition of intelligence that involves the ability to explore the world and to understand one’s experiences in it. You could call it “slow learning” because it’s not oriented towards quick results or competition with others. Rather, it involves knowing how to create hypotheses and to test them. It also understands that answers are only “right” in certain contexts and favors the personal process over the more public – and testable – product. As Harvard professor Ellen J. Langer writes in her book The Power of Mindful Learning (Perseus Books, 1998), “If we can shed [the] outcome orientation, we may discover that the freedom to define the process is more significant than achieving an outcome that has no inherent meaning or value outside that particular setting.” When education becomes a journey rather than a
destination, learning can be seen as a process of active
self-determination. And that is a life’s work. Creating
to Win – March 1, 2005 Awards are ubiquitous in our society. They boost sales of books, paintings and films, and are often accompanied by cash prizes, both of which are critical to keeping the arts and artists alive. They recognize excellence in all aspects of life, which is especially important in a one-size-fits-all society. I’ve received my fair share of kudos, both informal and formal. Somewhere there is a photo of me at age 13 posing uncomfortably in the backyard with a bunch of awards for academics and attendance (!) mounted on a piece of plywood by my proud father. Although I haven’t pursued awards as an adult (and a few times have even declined nominations), I know first-hand the ego boost involved with being able to put “award-winning” in front of the word “journalist” in my bio. So why am I feeling so grumpy? I seldom pay much
attention to the awards announcements or television shows because I
generally have seen none of the nominated films, listened to little of
the music and read few of the books. Perhaps my tastes are oddball.
Actually, I don’t like to be told that I should read, listen to or
view something just because a bunch of “experts” think it’s great.
I’d rather embark on the adventure of deciding for myself, even if
that means wading through some occasional rubbish. Anyway, for me, art
is endangered by competition and the accompanying consumerism. I fear
that so much emphasis on competition can endanger the quality of
artistic expression and communication, with creators consciously or
subconsciously dulling the edges and lessening the risk in order to be
acceptable to a jury. When people compete for recognition, they don’t
share...and I believe that communication and cross-fertilization foster
creativity. Just like memorizing facts in order to regurgitate
them on a test isn’t real learning, writing a novel to win an award
isn’t real creating. Return
to current weblog copyright © Wendy Priesnitz 200 7 |
Topics & Passions: natural learning ~ What I'm reading: Mother-Daughter
Wisdom - Creating a Legacy of Physical and Emotional Health by
Christiane Northrup (2005, Bantam)
~ What I'm Listening To:
Solo
by Yo-Yo Ma (Silk Road/Sony)
~ Fav Bookmarks: Deep Fun ~
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