The other day SHA producer member Erin from Tobellie Hill posted a series of pictures to Instagram of her son Toby planting out his own market garden. Dan and Erin and their four kids run a market garden between Braidwood and Captains Flat, and apparently Toby had got up one hot, humid morning with a single minded mission to create his very own market garden. Dan and Erin were busy with their own planting at the time so Toby, ever the stubborn and determined little kid, just got on with it all on his own. Toby told his mum that he had planted the garden ‘for people who couldn’t afford to buy food’. The story reminded me about an afternoon the other week when my four year old came home from preschool puzzled that his preschool teacher had taught the class how to draw a tree but had only drawn ‘half a tree’ because she hadn’t drawn the roots.
Looking back to my own childhood, my only memories of talking about the environment at school are watching Captain Planet after school with a vague twinge of guilt that there was a planet ‘out there’ somewhere which was in need of saving and Clean Up Australia Day, where we would spend an hour or so once a year complaining bitterly whilst picking up stinky rubbish. Granted, both Toby and my son Felix have the advantage of living in the bush with parents who run farms, but all that aside I still think that this generation of kids with their climate marches and kitchen gardens in schools, are far more switched on to the environment and where food comes from than any generation that has come before them.
I think teaching environmental literacy to kids is really important but as someone recovering from a debilitating case of ecological despair myself, I think we need to make sure we handle some of the heavier stuff going on in the world with care when it comes to talking to kids. I reckon the way to produce kids like Toby is through immersing kids in the sheer joy and beauty of nature where ever we can. Our goal should be to make them fall in love and understand how they are connected to nature and I think that from this place anything is possible.
Now, I bet you can’t get the Captain Planet theme song out of your head can you? If you’ve forgotten it, it goes something like this… ‘Captain Planet, he’s a HERO, gunna take pollution down to ZERO’…. Got it? Good. Sorry (not sorry).