At any moment we have a choice: to come from love or to come from fear.
Ecological education for children is especially important in this grand campaign to save our earth. Children are the future. The values, attitudes, and information they have about the world around them will inevitably shape that future. Fortunately, children are naturally predisposed to love the earth and to want to take care of it and its living beings. The more these feelings can be encouraged and enhanced by educational experiences and knowledge, the more harmonious a relationship our children are likely to have with the beautiful but endangered planet they are inheriting from us.
And why do we do it? Because we care about exposing this future generation to environmental ways of thinking now, while they are children with open minds. Because we want to share with them the beauty and wonder we find in nature. And because, quite simply, it’s a lot of fun.
When I tried to analyze the feeling that emanates from Hidden Villa (HV) as a whole, all I could come up with was something that sounds very trite and corny, but also sounds true. IT’S A PLACE OF LOVE. Why do we do this, spend our time trying to instill an awareness and respect for how the world works in children? Certainly, we all have our personal goals, our hope of gaining something ourselves from the experience—but in essence, in basic fact, we do it out of love. And maybe that’s why everyone there seems to have such an abundance of love—for the children, for each other, for the work they do and for the place itself.
A few times a parent will express outrage that we are indoctrinating their little one in radical environmental propaganda. Clearly, we are promulgating an attitude; and while our motives spring from our own deep convictions, our methods are not the simple inculcation of ecological dogma that could be assumed. On the whole, we ask questions, not pontificate answers.
Some of my questions leave them (the children) perplexed, which is as it should be. There aren’t easy solutions to the problems of urban sprawl, overpopulation, pollution, and resource use that I can smoothly stuff down their throats. All I can do is get them to think about it, to grasp at least the general outlines of the problems, and to raise the possibility that they can do something in their own lives to be part of the solutions.
As someone who believes in the healing powers of wild places and the universal magic of wild places, it is gratifying to see the changes wrought in my children after just one day. Their faces are shining and even the shyest ones are chattering excitedly.
Yet, have I taught them all I could? They are leaving for the identical home environment. How much of it will stick? Are they feeling, sharing my feelings, learning not just facts but how to feel?
I go with these children because I feel I can actively make some of my ideals come true. A child goes home transformed; something tangible has happened. I can see the joy and the awakening in a child’s eyes. Perhaps our crusade is idealistic. But it’s better than giving up. At least I know I am doing something.