Your Green Review

20 percent of America goes to school every day to gain the education and problem solving skills they’ll need to succeed in competitive job markets and an increasingly uncertain global economy.  At 6 1/2 hours a day, 5 days a week for roughly 36 weeks a year, that’s approximately 1,170 hours per child per year spent studying the importance of proper grammar, basic science and fundamental mathematical formulas in schools across the nation.  This knowledge is indeed relevant and important, but when some of the most pressing issues facing our youth exist outside the confines of traditional education, how well are we truly preparing them for the challenges their futures hold?

According to a George Mason University study (the largest on climate change to date), the majority of adults agree that global warming is a serious problem and poses significant risk to future generations.  Unfortunately, few schools have taken the initiative to educate their students in the basics of environmental stewardship, responsible consumption or climate change.  Now, whether or not you happen to be one of those in agreement about global warming, none can deny that our nation’s current rate of consumption is non-sustainable when the average American generates over 4.5 lbs of trash a day and consumes five times more energy than the average global citizen.

Our legacy of over (and irresponsible) consumption is reason enough to garner significant concern, but it is unconscionable that we are allowing the very generations we expect to handle our ‘clean-up’ to enter into their own futures only partially environmentally literate.  Truth be told, as frightening as the aforementioned consumption statistics may sound, a simple fact remains: we adults won’t bear the full brunt of our own inaction and reluctance to assimilate current ecological threats into traditional education structures.  We will likely never see the end of oil or a day when massive water shortages become a global human crisis (more so than they are today).  That will be for our children and our children’s children…unless something changes.

Of course we can’t undo decade’s worth of damage over night; that would be impossible.  We can, however, alter our behavior today and model a solutions-oriented approach for our nation’s students by engaging them in the problem-solving process.  Weaving real-world issues into current teaching programs comes at no cost and, amazingly, children have a natural propensity towards environmental stewardship making them not only receptive, but active, learners in this area.  Ironically, for the billions that we pump into alternative energy research and cutting edge ‘clean’ technology, our own children may be nature’s best line of defense in the fight against us…if we’d just allow it.