Friday 9 July 2010

Chief Seattle's Testimony

I  came across Neil Spencer's "looped cursive" handwriting book from my class of 9 year olds in 1976. His handwriting had improved wonderfully during the year in my class and he was proud for me to keep it as an example of what can be achieved. What has this to do with sustainability you might well ask. Well, after using Spike Milligan poems and children's regional skipping games (Iona & Peter Opie + children's own knowledge) for the texts for our daily 4 lines or so of handwriting, I came across Chief Seattle's Testimony. So we used that and spent time discussing what had happened in 1854, what his message to the white man was and what it might mean for us in Colne, Lancashire today. The children were genuinely inspired by his words (even if he didn't say exactly that, even if they were changed at a later date, even if they were invention. See "A native american eco-gospel or Southern Baptist creation?") It made them think about their environment and how it was being spoiled. It helped them to realise the importance of noticing nature across the seasons, during our monthly walk around the same patch of cemetry, riverbank, woodland and abandoned land behind the old Lancashire cotton mills, long silent. That summer term we organised cleaning the river/stream with the help of the local district council who provided, gloves and plastic sacks and a skip. It was a success but deemed too risky to repeat. "Why were they not in school? Wasn't it too dangerous? What were they learning from the experience? "Shouldn't the council clean up the river/stream?... How proud they were of what they had achieved. I told them earlier in the year that if they started and finished each lesson on time saving at least 5 mins. for each lesson, more than 20 mins. a day, and nearly 2 hours a week, they would earn 3 whole days during the summer term to do some worthwhile project that they could choose. Another year and another class, we conducted a local tree survey over a period of  a few weeks.
The good news, some of the trees especially the ones with TPOs (tree preservation order) are still there, the little saplings in danger of being vandalised, now majestically line the road. The children knew they had made a small difference. The bad news, 3 years after the river clean up a local company up stream suffered a fractured pipe on a suphuric acid storage tank. The children now at the local secondary school came to me one day after school in tears to tell me about the dead fish. It mattered to them, it was their river now. The company was fined, and eventually life returned to the little river. I have happy memories watching them play by the side of a sand bank, swimming and splashing after the clean up knowing all the broken glass, old bikes and steel drums ... had been removed. I wonder what their children's experiences have been?. Neil will be 43.
How can we develop a sense of place in today's children?

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