The Oil Drum

103 comments on DrumBeat: April 21, 2007

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Yosemite Sam on April 21, 2007 - 1:48pm

Hi Beggar,

Thanks for responding. A quite a few of us her at TOD have done what you have done. I have not done it for seventh graders--you are a hero! How did it go?

When I put together a couple of presentations, I had to work pretty hard and the results were not that great. My thinking is that the truly gifted could work on this area. I would like to put in my two cents worth.

The results might well be a list of FAQ's, talking points, Power Point presentations for different age and educational levels.

There certainly are some nice links here, but I think we could do better.

Regarding this:

Perhaps a bigger challenge is overcoming my own bitterness at the blindness and "intentional ignorance" so cultivated in our (USA) culture, at least. Wow, is that a big challenge.

I think that we have to get the word out. At some point, it will hit critical mass, and people will convert.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

beggar on April 21, 2007 - 9:23pm

YS -- well, the 7th and 8th graders showed remarkable awareness of what a resource war is. When asked what a resource war is, the response was: "Doh! Oil! Iraq!"

They also showed little interest in military service in the Middle East or anywhere else for that matter.

The students were very interested in understanding the energy costs of agriculture, fast food, heating and cooling houses, and getting around.

Some imagined the future at first as being more of the same, only "more and cooler stuff" and "bigger and cooler malls." But after a bit of talk these students began to question their Disneyesque technomagical thinking. some students were already very concerned about the future, but many had obviously had no encouragement to think about it from home.

School science teacher was able to integrate this into his "humans and energy" and environmental curriculum. He had the students look up websites like Energybulletin and the like as part of their online research.