I truly do not understand why far-right Republicans seem to feel that they must be, by necessity, diametrically opposed to environmentalists in their outlook and rhetoric. (The words "conservation" and "conservative" are etymological cousins, after all). Russell Kirk, the author whose book, The Conservative Mind, is a touchstone for uber-Republicans, wrote that true conservatives resist the "reduction of human striving to material production and consumption."
Theodore Roosevelt didn't merely donate to conservation organizations, he founded one - the Boone and Crockett Club. Boone and Crockett (which included such worthies as Civil War Generals William T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan) lobbied Congress successfully to protect Yellowstone National Park from poachers and the development designs of the Northern Pacific railroad. Boone and Crockett is still a dynamic and very active force for wildlife conservation.
The anti-environmental ideologues should be reminded of the actions of the man every conservative venerates - Ronald Reagan. As governor of California, Reagan led a horseback camping trip into the Sierra to denounce a proposed trans-Sierra highway. Reagan also signed legislation blocking dams on free-flowing rivers on California's north coast and establishing a state "wild and scenic rivers" system.
In 1984, Reagan said: "What is a conservative after all, but one who conserves, one who is committed to protecting and holding close the things by which we live … And we want to protect and conserve the land on which we live - our countryside, our rivers and mountains, our plains and meadows and forests. This is our patrimony. This is what we leave to our children. And our great moral responsibility is to leave it to them either as we found it or better than we found it." Words to remember and honor.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Angel Oak
Some call me a "tree-hugger" - and they, generally, mean this in a derogatory fashion. I fail to understand the implied insult, for I have found few things more beautiful in this world than trees. (I also have a deep mistrust of anyone who has not, in their life-time, hugged a tree. If those who cast aspersions thought back to the days of their childhood, I believe that they, too, would remember the feeling of wrapping their arms around a stalwart trunk and experiencing an inner sense of joy, peace and connection).
The Angel Oak is a Southern live oak (Quercus virginiana) tree located in Angel Oak Park in Charleston, SC (Johns Island). Standing 65 ft tall, measuring 9 ft in diameter and shading, with its crown, an area of 17,000 square feet, it is estimated to be in excess of 1400 years old. Its longest limb is 89 feet in length.
This Oak is thought to be one of the oldest living organisms east of the Mississippi River. (This magnificent tree sprouted 1000 years before Columbus' arrival in the New World). Recorded history traces the ownership of the live oak and surrounding land back to 1717 when Abraham Waight received it as part of a small land grant. The tree stayed in the Waight family for four generations, and was part of a Marriage Settlement to Justus Angel and Martha Waight Tucker Angel. In modern times, the Angel Oak has become the focal point of a public park. It has survived countless hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and human interference.
It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. - Robert Louis Stevenson
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Education
Sir Ken Robinson on Education:
“As the new members of 111th Congress wander through the building looking for their desks and lockers, it may feel for some of them like the first day at school. They should hold on to that feeling. One of the biggest challenges they face is sorting out American education. Given the recession, the dire situation in the Middle East and the general state of the planet, education is probably not at the top of their to-do list. It must be soon. Transforming education has to be at the root of everything the new administration hopes to achieve, and nothing it does in the short term will be sustainable otherwise.
President Obama swayed the nation on a promise of change and the renewal of the American Dream. I'm sure he knows that the dream itself has to change. The future for the American Dream is not the materialist coma that Edward Albee parodied in the 1960s, for which we're now receiving the check. It has to be the wide awake dream of people like Martin Luther King -- a passionate vision of social equality and personal possibility, of economic responsibility and cultural respect. Realizing this dream means thinking in radically different ways about ourselves and our children, about our relationships with the earth itself and about the billions of other people who are clinging to it with us.
All of this is the work of education. Not the sort of education we have now. The present system was designed for 19th century industrialism and it's overheating in a dangerous way. Reforming education isn't enough. The real task is transformation. America urgently needs systems of education that live and breathe in the 21st century. This is a large task and it can't be put off.
My family and I moved to America almost eight years ago. Before we moved I remember being told that Americans don't get irony. I never believed that, but I had the proof it wasn't true when I came across the education bill, No Child Left Behind. Whoever thought of that title clearly gets irony. The fact is this legislation is actually leaving millions of children behind. I can see that's not a very attractive name for an education bill -- "Millions of Children Left Behind" -- but it's closer to the truth and less ironic.
President Obama has said that NCLB was well intentioned, and it was. He's said too that one of the major problems in implementing it has been the lack of federal funding, and it has. But he knows too that the problems with NCLB are much deeper than money. The whole premise of the act is deeply flawed. It's based on the fatal idea that to face the future schools just have to do better what they did in the past: they simply have to get back to basics and raise standards. Schools, and policy makers, should get back to basics. They should aim to raise standards too. Why would you lower them? But what are the basics now, and which standards should apply?
I said that the premise of the act is flawed. Actually there are three flawed premises. First, NCLB promotes a catastrophically narrow idea of intelligence and ability. The result is a terrible waste of talent and motivation in countless students. Second, it confuses standards with standardizing. The result is that schools across the country are becoming dreary and homogenized. And third, it assumes that education can be improved without the professional creativity and personal passion of teachers. The result is that too many good teachers are streaming out of the very schools that urgently need them to stay. All of this is holding America back in a world that's moving faster than ever.
To face the future, America needs to celebrate and develop the diverse talents of all of its people -- young and old alike. It needs to cultivate creativity and innovation, systematically and with confidence, in business, in culture and in rebuilding its post industrial communities. It needs to provide leadership at home and abroad in promoting deeper forms of cultural understanding and cooperation. These are the real basics. Basic to all of them is a different view of human talent and ability, and of the real conditions in which people flourish.
I'm always struck by how many adults have no idea what their real talents are, or whether they have any at all. Many people just do what they do with no particular passion or commitment to it. I know others who genuinely love what they do; who would probably do it for free if they had to, and can't imagine doing anything else. Understanding what makes the difference is essential for transforming education, business, and communities to meet the real challenges of the twenty-first century.
I've lost track of the numbers of brilliant people I've met, in all fields, who didn't do well at school. Some did of course, but others only really succeeded, and found their real talents in the process, once they'd recovered from their education. This is largely because the current systems of public education were never designed to develop everyone's talents. They were intended to promote certain types of ability in the interests of the industrial economies they served.
Economically and culturally, the future of America and of the rest of world lies now in a different direction. It will depend on the vitality, diversity and creativity of all its people. The good news is that there are many strong, practical and highly effective new forms of education that point the way. In future blogs, I'll say what some of the best of these are and the basic principles on which they're based.
The wholesale transformation of education is at the heart of the changes that are needed. It's not something that Congress, or the state governments, can get round to later on. If they put this off for too long, they may find that that they and the whole country are left behind. That would be too ironic.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
“As the new members of 111th Congress wander through the building looking for their desks and lockers, it may feel for some of them like the first day at school. They should hold on to that feeling. One of the biggest challenges they face is sorting out American education. Given the recession, the dire situation in the Middle East and the general state of the planet, education is probably not at the top of their to-do list. It must be soon. Transforming education has to be at the root of everything the new administration hopes to achieve, and nothing it does in the short term will be sustainable otherwise.
President Obama swayed the nation on a promise of change and the renewal of the American Dream. I'm sure he knows that the dream itself has to change. The future for the American Dream is not the materialist coma that Edward Albee parodied in the 1960s, for which we're now receiving the check. It has to be the wide awake dream of people like Martin Luther King -- a passionate vision of social equality and personal possibility, of economic responsibility and cultural respect. Realizing this dream means thinking in radically different ways about ourselves and our children, about our relationships with the earth itself and about the billions of other people who are clinging to it with us.
All of this is the work of education. Not the sort of education we have now. The present system was designed for 19th century industrialism and it's overheating in a dangerous way. Reforming education isn't enough. The real task is transformation. America urgently needs systems of education that live and breathe in the 21st century. This is a large task and it can't be put off.
My family and I moved to America almost eight years ago. Before we moved I remember being told that Americans don't get irony. I never believed that, but I had the proof it wasn't true when I came across the education bill, No Child Left Behind. Whoever thought of that title clearly gets irony. The fact is this legislation is actually leaving millions of children behind. I can see that's not a very attractive name for an education bill -- "Millions of Children Left Behind" -- but it's closer to the truth and less ironic.
President Obama has said that NCLB was well intentioned, and it was. He's said too that one of the major problems in implementing it has been the lack of federal funding, and it has. But he knows too that the problems with NCLB are much deeper than money. The whole premise of the act is deeply flawed. It's based on the fatal idea that to face the future schools just have to do better what they did in the past: they simply have to get back to basics and raise standards. Schools, and policy makers, should get back to basics. They should aim to raise standards too. Why would you lower them? But what are the basics now, and which standards should apply?
I said that the premise of the act is flawed. Actually there are three flawed premises. First, NCLB promotes a catastrophically narrow idea of intelligence and ability. The result is a terrible waste of talent and motivation in countless students. Second, it confuses standards with standardizing. The result is that schools across the country are becoming dreary and homogenized. And third, it assumes that education can be improved without the professional creativity and personal passion of teachers. The result is that too many good teachers are streaming out of the very schools that urgently need them to stay. All of this is holding America back in a world that's moving faster than ever.
To face the future, America needs to celebrate and develop the diverse talents of all of its people -- young and old alike. It needs to cultivate creativity and innovation, systematically and with confidence, in business, in culture and in rebuilding its post industrial communities. It needs to provide leadership at home and abroad in promoting deeper forms of cultural understanding and cooperation. These are the real basics. Basic to all of them is a different view of human talent and ability, and of the real conditions in which people flourish.
I'm always struck by how many adults have no idea what their real talents are, or whether they have any at all. Many people just do what they do with no particular passion or commitment to it. I know others who genuinely love what they do; who would probably do it for free if they had to, and can't imagine doing anything else. Understanding what makes the difference is essential for transforming education, business, and communities to meet the real challenges of the twenty-first century.
I've lost track of the numbers of brilliant people I've met, in all fields, who didn't do well at school. Some did of course, but others only really succeeded, and found their real talents in the process, once they'd recovered from their education. This is largely because the current systems of public education were never designed to develop everyone's talents. They were intended to promote certain types of ability in the interests of the industrial economies they served.
Economically and culturally, the future of America and of the rest of world lies now in a different direction. It will depend on the vitality, diversity and creativity of all its people. The good news is that there are many strong, practical and highly effective new forms of education that point the way. In future blogs, I'll say what some of the best of these are and the basic principles on which they're based.
The wholesale transformation of education is at the heart of the changes that are needed. It's not something that Congress, or the state governments, can get round to later on. If they put this off for too long, they may find that that they and the whole country are left behind. That would be too ironic.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
