Kids Say the Darndest Things! But what they don't know can hurt them.
I teach conservation to public school children in a rural Nebraskan town (pop 4000). Course topics include recycling, waste management, and environmental conservation. The facts are easy enough to impart, although sometimes the kids’ understanding of their world surprises me.
"Where does plastic come from?" I asked a group of ten-year-olds.
"From trees?"
"It grows in the ground."
"We get it at the grocery store."
"Animals make it."
They were missing the point, of course, but they were all "technically" correct. I do my best to promote discussion by drawing on what is right about an answer.
"Close. Plastic is made from oil, which comes from decayed organic matter lying deep underground," I explain.
After days of considering the question of waste management, I ask: "The average person produces 1825 pounds of garbage per year. What can we do about all this garbage we produce?"
"Burn it!"
"Bury it!"
"Dump it in Iraq!"
Sometimes it’s tough to catch them getting it right.
The most popular class is called "Popcorn Generation", which goes like this: Put two grocery bags of popcorn in the front of the room and divide the class into three groups of three, six and 12 each. Explain that since each successive generation contains more people, each group represents a generation; their parents, them and their children. There is only one rule: each generation has to wait its turn to get popcorn until the preceding one is done getting what they want. That’s it – NO other rules. Students can take all they want, spill, horde, whatever.
This exercise has resulted in tears, name-calling and near fistfights. There is always a mess and always a great deal of shouting, "NO FAIR!!"
After the class has settled down, I ask:
"If the popcorn represents a limited resource -- say, oil -- and this exercise illustrates what happens when people are faced with a continuing need for that limited resource, what can we do?"
"Share. Make laws about sharing."
"Don’t waste by letting it spill. Make rules about that."
"Don’t take more than you need."
"Leave some for other people who come after you."
But always the inevitable:
"Go get more."
"But there isn’t any more."
"There’s always more."
"Really? How do we get more?"
"Dig in the ground. It’s always down there."
"What if runs out or gets too expensive to get?"
"Take it from other countries."
"Steal it?"
"Yeah, it’s okay if you don’t know them."
"Really?! Well, what happens when that runs out?"
"We get more!"
"How?"
"Get it from other planets."
"Make more."
"Pray to God to send us more."
I bite my lip and remind myself that while these may sound like crazy answers, they are consistent with a generation of children whose parents’ worldview comes from talk radio, Fox News and fundamentalist Christian churches.
But something else is at work here. These kids are convinced that more is always available; that there is really no such thing as "limited". What in their life experiences teaches them that?
Well, money isn’t limited: you can always go the bank to get more. Food is certainly not limited: there’s more at the grocery store, lots more! TV isn’t limited: it’s available 24 hours/day and there are more channels than you can watch. Technology isn’t limited: new inventions abound and they’re cheap. Time isn’t even limited: they’re kids after all! What limits do they know? None, really.
Yet the limits to our resources worldwide are real and coming fast. And ironically, it will be the poorer populations, the ones who live with limits and deprivation every day, who will be better prepared to adapt to future lifestyle restrictions than our own relatively advanced American children.
Naturally, we would never trust our future to those who think like 10-year-olds. We can only hope that the ones who do understand limits will effectively manage the approaching transition.
In the meantime, I will keep teaching my program until I consistently get the answer I’m looking for:
"Learn to eat something else besides popcorn."