Too often as adults we think that we know everything. We have already made decisions about things in our life, placed subjects, people and places in categories that are good and bad. We’ve weighed options, we’ve reflected and still, somehow it has become alright for us to stop caring about what is important. Perhaps adults do not think they know everything but at least we think we know more. More than people who are younger, people who are less educated and people who think differently. Children fall in all three of those categories. I am here to tell you a valuable lesson.
In grade 5 it was a curriculum expectation to teach the students about an environmental issue in Canada and teach them how Canada has dealt with the environmental issue. Naturally, because of my degree in Human Rights and my interest in the tar sands, I chose this topic. I was worried the students would not be interested in it, if you have ever had twenty-five ten year olds in the same room you to will understand this is a constant concern, or would not understand the complexity of the situation but after showing them a few videos to introduce the subject their minds were reeling, their hands were in the air and they were raring to ask questions and to be heard. I think the first thing that struck them was shock. Shock at the images they had seen, the pollution, the disease, the animals suffering but also shock that this was happening in their country, that their government was allowing this to happen. The latter seemed to be the thing that they could not understand as most of them kept asking, “Why doesn’t the government stop it? Don’t they know?” That was a difficult concept for me to explain to them. “We need oil.” I told them. “We need money for the economy.” The response I got changed my perception on my students and on the subject as a whole. “Why do we need oil or money,” they asked “If they are destroying the environment to get it? What is left?” They wanted to know. “After the government has allowed the waters and the earth to be polluted, after animals disappear, when crops can no longer be grown and air is hard to breath and we can’t swim?” “What will oil give us when the environment is destroyed? What will money give us?”
They were right and their argument was so simple it is one that I think so many of us have just accepted. Why are we sacrificing our environment the earth in which we live for money? For greed? So long ago I had been like them raring to make a difference, angry about the unfairness in life but I had since hung up my activist hat and came to the “adult” realization that the world is just like this. That one person cannot make a difference. That sometimes we have to put up with the evils of the world to live the lifestyles that we do now. Children do not have that thinking process and I think that is something to be amazed by. In fact, once recess was over they had started to make slogans and acronyms to make a change. They wanted to make a difference and I wanted to support them. We continued to learn about the tar sands over the next couple days and my student’s interest never ceased.
One day after a discussion, one of the students asked me the hardest question I had yet to answer. What’s the solution? I suddenly realized how scary the topic must be for them. Topics like this, fights like this one, this was their future. As wise adults we have begun to destroy the earth for the next generation, out of greed, out of fear and out of not realizing what is important. Children aren’t touched by greed perhaps they are not as logical as we are yet either but they are touched by fear. When I looked at them I realized that this was something I couldn’t fix for them. Me, one of the people who was supposed to have all the solutions. I could give them band-aids for their cuts, I could resolve their school yard squabbles, I could help them learn concepts that confused them, but I could not find a solution for something that could possibly hurt them the most. The solution was perhaps something they would have to come up with.
An idea is the most powerful thing that I have to offer my students and they have taken an idea and made a difference in my life as well. They have allowed me to see the things that I forgot were important in life. They have allowed me to become closer to myself and closer to what is right. They have taught me a valuable lesson. No matter how small the action, how insignificant it can be. One person can make a difference and it helps if they have twenty-five grade 5’s behind them.