The cruel trick has been pulled on this benighted child by an agglomeration of foodies and educational reformers who are propelled by a vacuous if well-meaning ideology that is responsible for robbing an increasing number of American schoolchildren of hours they might other wise have spent reading important books or learning higher math (attaining the cultural achievements, in other words, that have lifted uncounted generations of human beings out of the desperate daily scrabble to wrest sustenance from dirt).
How do you feel? Do you think that we can only advance with "important books" and "higher math", as a departure from our ancestors who scrabbled in the dirt? Or do you feel that we can (gasp!) find a combination of the two?
A few places I like to go :
Ugh! This quote almost makes me feel sick. I don't think I'm going to read the article.
ReplyDeleteI love the great books and I value math, but without balance, without accounting for different learning styles, without the knowledge that we gain naturally from the actual physical world around us, we are indeed poorly educated.
Thanks for the other links. =)
Wow, I don't even know what to say about that quote. I love important books and all sorts of intellectual persuits, but isn't the evidence clear for nature and health as part of education? Sheesh!
ReplyDeleteThe Children and Nature Network has lots of resources and information, too. www.childrenandnature.org
Thanks, Anna and Tom. The article is a bit sickening - I just have a lot of trouble with the idea that, as we educate a generation who will inherit a severely damaged earth, some think that we should barrel ahead with "intellectualism" on top and issues of sustainability and environmentalism further down, or perhaps not even on, the list of educational priorities. Up until I read this piece, I thought everyone liked that sustainability was climbing the list!
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