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Archives
- March, 2006
Can’t See the Forest for the Schools
– March 7, 2006
According to
Reuters Daily World Environment News on Planet Ark, U.S. President
Bush’s proposed 2007 budget calls for selling off 300,000 acres of
public forests to raise money for its education program, especially
rural schools. The proposal is actually a five-year extension and
ramping down of a law signed in 2000 by Bill Clinton, which was supposed
to end this year. The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act
created federal funding for schools
in rural areas from timber sales and Bureau of Land Management revenues.
Reuters quoted a government official as saying that local governments
and land trusts would have the right of first refusal in the sales,
provided that they pay fair market value, thus helping the lands to
remain publicly owned. But critics question whether or not such groups
could finance such purchases in any major way and worry.
In both Life Learning and Natural Life
magazines, we have described the recent research about the
“de-naturing” of childhood and what author Richard Louv calls the
“nature-deficit disorder” (see articles in Natural Life’s and
Life
Learning’s May/June 2005 issues and Louv’s book Last Child in the
Woods). How sadly ironic and incredibly short-sighted that a government
would think of sacrificing such wonderful natural learning environments
for school buildings!
Posted:
2006/03/07 10:27 AM
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