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Archives
- March, 2005
Doom-Mongering or Wake-Up Call? – March 31, 2005
A new United Nations report says we are using up our natural
resources too fast and are in danger of destroying about two-thirds of
the Earth’s ecosystems. It hasn’t taken long for the right wing think thanks, in their
typical knee-jerk reaction fashion, to churn out press releases
likening the UN to Chicken Little.
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.
Posted: 2005/03/31 12:04 PM
Learning Neatness – March 21, 2005
I get a lot of feedback from Life Learning readers. And I love it,
whether it’s praising or criticizing, because one of my goals for
magazine editing is to challenge, provoke and get readers to think. And
feedback means people are engaged with the magazine and care enough to
share their opinions. However, the response to one recent piece is
troubling me. Naomi Aldort’s column in the March/April issue, entitled
“Who Should Clean Up the Mess?” seems to have hit a hot button for
many women. Naomi asks us to recognize that most children aren’t
motivated to clean up their own messes and argues against coercing them
to do so, on the basis that it will only create resentment and dislike
for the whole idea of cleaning up. And she says that parents should
accept that the need for a clean house is theirs, not their
children’s, and be honest about that with their children. “There is
only one ‘mess’,” she writes, “and that is the confusion of mind
which tells us to expect children to be who they aren’t or to do what
they don’t.”
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.
Posted: 2005/03/21 10:41 AM
The Learning Journey – March
17, 2005
I’ve been thinking about the term “growing up”. What does it mean,
really? When has a person reached “up”? When they hit six feet tall?
When they turn 20? Or 30? Or 50? When they can support themselves
financially? Of course, those are all arbitrary criteria, set in
relation to our cultural and family experiences. They are
mere signposts along the road to a destination that we are not able to
locate on anyone’s life map. Maybe, like Peter Pan, we never grow up!
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!).
Posted: 2005/03/17 10:36 AM
Suburban
Angst – March 13, 2005
I’ve just screened a video
entitled The End of Suburbia, for an
article I’m working on for the May/June issue of Natural
Life. It poses some serious questions about the viability of what
has, for the past 50 years or so, been seen as a promise of space,
affordability, family life and upward mobility. The film argues that
suburbia may be doomed due to the decline of fossil fuels and the
escalating cost of transportation. It also suggests that today’s
suburbs are destined to become the slums of tomorrow unless we take
action now.
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.
Posted: 2005/03/13 1:02 PM
Slow Learning – March 6, 2005
There is one definition of intelligence that involves speed, results and
competition – getting the right answer to a question quickly and doing
it faster than anyone else. Many parents seem to buy into this
definition by comparing the speed at which their children master skills,
and being proud when they have learned to walk, talk or read before the
neighbor’s kids have. Many teachers show that they value this type of
intelligence by praising students who can come up with the “right”
answer to an oral quiz, who solve problems quickly, or who choose the
most prescribed answers on a multiple choice test within the allotted
time frame. Unfortunately, some people who perform well in this sort of
school setting don’t do as well in the real world. And conversely,
many successful and unquestionably “intelligent” people like Albert
Einstein do poorly in school.
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.
Posted: 2005/03/06 12:22 PM
Creating
to Win – March 1, 2005
Winter seems to be the season of awards. The
Academy Awards were announced last weekend, the Golden Globe and
People’s Choice awards happened earlier this year, a variety of music
industry awards have recently been handed out (and, of course,
televised), the Emmy Awards for television shows will soon be announced,
a raft of book awards were announced just before Christmas, etc.
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.
Posted: 2005/03/01 10:24 AM
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