A Cautionary Video About America’s ‘Stuff’

[groovedaddy]

The thick-lined drawings of the Earth, a factory and a house, meant to convey the cycle of human consumption, are straightforward and child-friendly. So are the pictures of dark puffs of factory smoke and an outlined skull and crossbones, representing polluting chemicals floating in the air.

Which is one reason “The Story of Stuff,” a 20-minute video about the effects of human consumption, has become a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation.

The video is a cheerful but brutal assessment of how much Americans waste, and it has its detractors. But it has been embraced by teachers eager to supplement textbooks that lag behind scientific findings on climate change and pollution. And many children who watch it take it to heart: riding in the car one day with his parents in Tacoma, Wash., Rafael de la Torre Batker, 9, was worried about whether it would be bad for the planet if he got a new set of Legos.

“When driving by a big-box store, you could see he was struggling with it,” his father, David Batker, said. But then Rafael said, “It’s O.K. if I have Legos because I’m going to keep them for a very long time,” Mr. Batker recalled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/education/11stuff.html?th&emc=th

[mrcheerful]

1. What I would like kids to learn is new isn't always better and TV ads are just to sucker you into

buying crap you don't need along with the crap the business puts the crap into. I just bought a new PC this year, it came with a printer, it was packed in boxes, with foam packing, bubble wrap and it took me 2 days to cut the boxes up into squares along with cutting up all the packaging plastic crap. Now TV ads are telling kids some crazy crap. SO's son was watching TV one day, he was 12 at the time, he comes into where SO and I were stating we had to buy him this new shaving cream that would make him look 10 years younger, wtf?

That made me have to point out a few facts to him the first being, dude your 12 you don't have facial hair so therefore you don't shave so therefore you have no use for shaving cream!!!!!! And btw, why do you want to look 10 years younger? Dude your 12, 10 years off your face would mean you would look like your 2, you have to explain these things to him, he never thought what 10 years off his life meant. Then I explained TV ads were just crappy ways to convince the brain dead to buy crap they don't need at a price they can't afford to help pay for the TV ads.

The boy is 18 now, he refuses to wash and wear all Axe products and he is finding out about life as he moved in with his 1/2 brother's mom. He calls up regularly trying to con mom into sending him money because he is broke and can't buy his Axe products, he quit school as soon as he moved out and found out he can't get a job without the paper the school would have given him if he graduated, though he did start GED classes a few months ago and has 2 or 3 tests left to do. He is finding out about reality, slowly because he is "as thick as a brick" and thinks mom owes him something.

Maybe a program that gets kids to realize the impact they have on the environment helps more as it gives them reality checks, makes them think in terms of what is my behaviors doing to the world I live in now and the world I am creating.