Madison told me that large chunks of the engineering camp that she's currently in are replete with environmentalist junk science.
She's got such a good, smiley attitude about it; it doesn't bother her at all. She's extremely good about dissecting the doomsday junk. ("Don't use hair dryers, don't use air conditioning, get your parents to use fans instead, because global warming is drowning the polar bears".... Really. Not kidding.)
David can't decide whether to write a polite note to the director of the camp. He's fairly incensed that HIS university, an engineering university, is propagating this crap when they should be doing, well, engineering. (To be fair, they do one bona fide engineering project each day and Madison is enjoying it.)
It really doesn't bother her, it kind of amuses her, and if she wasn't herself able to separate the garbage from the worthwhile stuff in her good old mental recycling bins, I might be encouraging David to write away. But I think he should wait until after the camp to do so. She's fine, the kids are nice, the counselors are nice, she's having fun, and she knows gloom-and-doom stupidity when she hears it. And, frankly, she likes being able to come home and see how many of my buttons she can push by describing it.
But yes, I think David should write a note when it's all over, unless they shape up pronto.
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The theatre arts camp my 10 year-old is attending also requested that the kids bring reusable bottles and minimize packaging in order to help save the planet. What this has to do with singing, dancing, and acting I have yet to figure out. We had a lovely discussion about it anyway.
Yes. It’s everywhere, but I’d like to think that it hasn’t yet infiltrated my engineering college, either, though, it probably has.
It’s great that your daughter is able to separate the scare tactics from the science. Maybe she could give a mini-course to the adults!
One unfortunate thing is that Madison can't watch Penn & Teller's Bullshit! yet, if only because of the language, it's pretty ugly. But these guys have a fantastic episode that dissects recycling through and through. It's genius. Madison will love this episode someday. I'd encourage everyone to get it from Netflix or whereever, and watch it themselves or with their older children. Definitely worthwhile. (Some of the Penn & Teller episodes are philosophically pretty shaky, but they're always entertaining and generally on the proper side of the nonsense that is promulgated in today's society.)
I think it is almost impossible for our children to escape the junk environmental science when they attend classes outside of the home. We just have to ensure that we give our children good enough tools to see through the propaganda.
We have no worries about Ben as he is a natural skeptic, but Shira is a different issue. She wants to believe in the supernatural, in environmental issues and cute, cuddly animals.
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