IDC 9/2 Article Response
Chris Lau
The article made a couple of great arguments regarding how people can be more connected to the environment and to do things to preserve and save it for the future. First of all, the author mentions the continued growth of cities and its effect on people especially the younger generations who are born living in these cities, which creates detachment from the natural world around them. He brings up the term “shifting baseline” syndrome, which basically implies that as the environment continues to be destroyed, the people aren’t really noticing it because they only see the environment around them and compare the state of the environment in the future to the environment they were born into and are used to. This means that the environment is actually degrading at a faster rate than people think it is. This point makes a lot of sense because people don’t generally travel or pay attention to places where the environment is in great shape and just think of it as maybe the trees or parks surrounding their homes, so they don’t really get a sense of some of the other unique environments that exist around the world. This ties in with the factor of time that he also mentions because lets be honest, people especially those who live in the cities generally live really busy lives and can’t stop for ten minutes every time they see a new plant or organism. Also, even if they pause to observe the environment around them, they probably won’t know the names of the things they are looking at and don’t have a guide next to them to tell them what they are looking at.
Now, one possible solution to educate people more about their environment would be through the education system. As the author mentions, one of the best ways to help people learn the value of the environment is during their childhoods. Children are obviously spending more and more time indoors playing with all the fancy technology around nowadays compared to the children in older generations, who generally spent more time outside playing and exploring. It is definitely harder today for kids to spend time freely outdoors because their parents are usually busy people and the safety conditions aren’t as good as they used to be. Also, even the kids’ schedules are lined up with many different activities because parents want their kids to have diverse skillets and talents, so they can prevail in this competitive world. Simply put, there isn’t enough time nowadays for children to be spending 2-3 hours each day playing with soil, grass, and bugs. However, a solution that I think could work would be to integrate interacting with nature and the environment in school. The curriculum in public schools require biology, chemistry, and physics, but not environmental science, which in my opinion might be more practical for some of us compared to the other three topics mentioned above. There should be more on hands learning for elementary school students regarding the environment around them instead of just studying topics via textbooks and technology in the classroom. This solution wouldn’t interfere with time also because every kid has to spend their day at school, and it wouldn’t take any time out of their extracurricular activities or playtime at home. Not many children today are going to choose to go outdoors and play around with grass and bugs compared to staying at home playing with their iPads or watching their favorite shows, so having this required on hands outdoor learning experience at schools will show them some interesting things about the environment and perhaps spark new interests regarding nature within the kids!
