Sunday... more so the last Sunday of the summer holidays is a treasured time! I want to max it out, have the best time in the world, do nothing and yet have a productive time. It certainly was one of those Sundays.
The morning started with a lazy facebook exploring that led me to a TED talk on the power of smile and another TED talk on the Green School. The Sunday newspaper followed with an interesting article on plastic fossils. The three seemingly different areas came together by the evening in my head, with the background of my recent Bali trip.
The newspaper article on plastics being a part of the fossils record was intriguing. Many scientists believe that we have now entered what is known as the Anthropocene era in which the human activity is leaving a massive imprint on the natural world. This imprint is long-lasting and includes what is known as plastiglomerates - a type of stone which is natural + human-made. Plastiglomerates are a fusion of sand, rock, wood, pebbles, basalt, coral etc along with human-made plastic in a molten form. The molten plastic binds the stuff together to make a hard rock-like object. This will remain as fossil records according to some scientists. Found first by a scientist in Hawaai, it was thought that it had something to do with the volcanic lava melting the plastic but later on it was found that it was actually the bonfires on the beach (where some people were burning plastic as is common in many developing countries), where these plastiglomerates were found.
One does wonder, where this will lead the humankind. What kind of chemicals would leach from these plastics and enter our water streams? What future are we leaving for our future generations?
The Al Gore movie - An Inconvenient truth - has raised some of these questions years ago. I used the book when I taught my Year 2 students the unit on Sharing the Planet and I distinctly remember the discomfort we all felt as we discussed the book (it was the children's version), to an extent that one child became distraught and was ready to switch off the classroom air conditioner right away.
The movie made someone else very distraught. John and Cynthia Hardy were in the jewellery business in Bali. After watching the movie, they became uncomfortable with the idea of leaving the world full of pollution, industrial waste and disrespect for nature, for the future generations. They opened what is known as the Green School, a school which is considered to be the greenest, modern school in the world. The TED talk on Green School was fascinating.
This time when in Bali, I was talking to Micky about how I think Education is going all wrong. All nations are moving or intending to move from an agrarian to the industrial to the information society. There will be a time when our future generations will have a mass of information specialists who are not aware of how to grow food; there will be pockets of food growers who will be able to demand high prices and food might actually be one of the most precious commodities! Unless, we change now, we get our children to get their hands dirty, experience farming and actually make it lucrative to get into it, the world will not be a better place. Come to think of it, no one that I know at the moment, has a child who is contemplating getting into farming/food production. Not only food but also talking of living 'green', it is not possible to not change the way we educate and yet expect our children to somehow imbibe and value the importance of green living!
Happy to note that I am not the only one thinking of it! John and Cynthia Hardy have a similar vision and the best part....? They did something about it! The Green School is a brilliant project which involves a beautiful, holistic curriculum run in a green building, by teacher passionate about the way we educate children. Children are involved in farming, growing food, learning the local way of life including the arts. Green school website
The TED talk on green school was inspiring. It gave me a reason to smile, which in turn gave me a high, equivalent to that I would get were I to receive a sum of 25000 pounds..... or ...... eat 2000 bars of chocolate! So says Ron Gutman in his inspiring talk about the hidden powers of smile! Hidden Power of Smile- TED talk High worth 2000 bars of chocolate, sans calories, sounds awesome!
Gutman goes on to say that as per a study in the Penn State university, smiling makes one look courteous, better and competent!
Now those are certainly good incentives to smile! :)
So smiiiiile! :)
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