My opinions, updates on my life, all sorts of "randomness"...

I saw this great article in Newsweek:

"Save the Elephants—Don't Buy Ivory Soap"
Burdening kids with issues they can't understand creates confusion, not future environmentalists
by Katie Johnson Slivovsky

In "Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education," educator David Sobel tells the story of an 8-year-old who learned about elephant poaching in school. At home, the girl created a poster for display in her local grocery store with the slogan "Save the Elephants: Don't Buy Ivory Soap." She wanted to help but clearly she didn't understand the issues surrounding poaching...

[There are]statistics about endangered animals and rain-forest destruction on kids' TV shows, in books and magazines, even on the backs of their animal-cracker and cereal boxes...

These include some seriously sad messages. One "Save the Earth" book lists this "amazing fact" for grade-school children: "Every day, 40,000 of the world's poorest children under age 5 die unnecessarily for lack of basic health care and medicine." An alphabet book about extinct animals tells preschoolers, "L is for Las Vegas frog ... People built the city of Las Vegas and paved over all the freshwater springs where this frog used to live. Sadly, we say goodbye to the Las Vegas frog." The very last sentence of the book is, "Let's hope human beings never become extinct."

Night-night, Jimmy.

Such good points made in the article, that apply to non-environmental issues as well. We throw so many things at kids that are way out of their grasp, then are surprised when they grow up too quickly. Wait, you mean letting 10-year-old girls walk around in tube tops and mini skirts isn't a good idea? Who ever would have realized that??

I watch these kids at camp (during the summer, and now during the rental groups) and compare them to myself growing up. The things they think about, the things they care about, are so vastly different than when I was growing up that it's impossible not to feel a slight "generation gap." Things need to stay "kid-appropriate," or they lose all their value.