"Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism." (David Suzuki)
I recently heard the annual National Symons Lecture on the State of the Canadian Confederation given by Canada's greatest spokesperson for the environment, David Suzuki. I am both inspired and impassioned to continue promoting (as I have for many years) the man and his views to my students; in fact, I am determined to invite him to our school to address an audience of high school students who never more needed than now to hear Dr. Suzuki's dire prognostications of a modern civilization that has made it impossible to advance without destroying the biosphere that sustains us. Canada's great Statesman will tell the young, in no uncertain terms, that a growing appetite for a lifestyle predicated on more gadgetry, transportation conveniences and urbanization of a once pristine rural environment is incommensurate now with survival as an animal species.
A time was never more ripe for skepticism among our young and a serious reevaluation of what our role is as co-sharers of a very precious non-renewable planet.
4 comments:
add to his visiting your students
him to this panel that I saw last night:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/310437-1
it is ALL about education at a young age AND food
for the hungry...
what he says ALSO fits into the fledgling discussions here : Poverty in America.
and
"check" out Johnathan Kozol via this video AND
Cornell West ... and the others !
(I was only going to watch the first 1 /2 hour or so
of this last night and switch over to that stupid series "what's it s name" but followed this entire broadcast.
(am sure that y'all up there in Canada dealing (or not dealing) with same issues ...
(I also have become an huge fan of Rep. Marcia Fudge ...
just wait until she "lays into" the majority (both Dems and Repubs) of her "mates" in congress!
will seek out "some" David Suzuki is he, perchance, related to Daisetz Suzuki ?
also,
part and probably the MAJOR of the problem with our "Education Conglomerate" is that bull-shit "no kid left behind" crap... and all of those required universal tests .... no one allowed to think for themselves or ask questions or protest or deviate from the Standards... then there is "privatized schools" and charter schools" make another Big Business out of Educationing ... Education/schools for the wealthy !
like in New York City... three PRE SKOOL through 3 rd grade charge $36,000 PER kid.... and there is a long waiting list...
you think that the State of Poetry and Art sucks ...
where in the hell are the 100,000 Bloggers for Change ? They ALL got their heads so far up their own asses that they have to open their mouths to take a shit !
Thanks, Ed,
I'll follow the links. And yes, big business and education go hand in hand. Everyone's following the money but losing their minds!
I saw a PBS program with Suzuki not long ago, and was charmed by him.
Dire predictions aside, we need people who can communicate the lessons he teaches.
We need a continuing poetics of nature--now more than ever--to counter the diversions of the gadget culture we live inside.
If we can't hear nature's message for ourselves, we need someone to listen to it and relay the message in a language we can understand.
I never needed an interpreter myself, but some people do. If Canadians can bring the message, that's great!
Thanks, Curtis
Suzuki's is a message nobody wants to hear: viz. our notion of 'growth' is incompatible with continued existence as an animal species on earth. It's a zero-sum game out there: with so many people crowding the planet and a correspondingly diminishing stock of food & energy resources, every extra hour of electricity, e.g., I consume is one less hour of electricity for a Pakistani villager.
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