Back to Nature
While I was walking through my neighborhood park recently, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was not alone in my desire to get out and see nature at its finest. The autumn season and its accompanying shedding of leaves had brought us city-dwellers out in droves.
In retrospect, I realize I really shouldn't have been as surprised as I was because nature has a way of attracting crowds. Even travel agents have caught on and each year sees more and more 'eco-holidays' on offer for those wishing to 'reunite' themselves with the great outdoors. It is fact, too, that the world's zoos and aquariums attract more people annually than all professional events combined.
According to Edward O. Wilson, a Harvard ecologist, humans have an innate love of nature and an actual need to immerse themselves in it. Children are the greatest examples of what Wilson has termed 'biophilia' or love of life. Point out a butterfly or an anthill to almost any child and watch their eyes light up with interest and curiosity. Or, for that matter, just watch grown-ups as they stroll through the park on a lovely autumn day. Their relaxed expression are enough to show that they are truly appreciative of their brief, but beneficial, contact with nature.
It is commonly believed that school is where people go to get an education. Nevertheless, it has been said that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The difference between schooling and education implied by this remark is important.
Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education has no limits. It can take place anywhere, whether in the shower or on the job, whether in the kitchen or on a tractor. It includes both the formal learning that takes place in school and the whole universe of informal learning. The agent (doer) of education can vary from respected grandparents to the people arguing about politics on the radio, from child to a famous scientist. Whereas schooling has a certain predictability, education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with a stranger may lead a person to discover how little is known of other religions. People receive education from infancy on. Education, then, is a very broad, inclusive term; it is a lifelong process, process that starts long before the start of school, and one that should be a necessary part of one’s entire life.
Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose general pattern varies little from one setting to the next. Throughout a county, children arrive at school at about the same time, take the assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, and so on. The pieces of reality that are to be learned, whether they are alphabet or an understanding of the workings of governments, have been limited by the subjects being taught. For example, high school students know that they are not likely to find out in their classes the truth about political problems in their society or what the newest filmmaker are experimenting with. There are clear and undoubted conditions surrounding the formalized process of schooling.
Some of Winifred Holtby’s friends wanted to see this biography published soon after her death in order to catch a supposed topical market and to forestall the appearance of half-informed studies. For those who loved her, I fully realize how painful and exasperating it has been to wait for a complete account of her life, based upon adequate knowledge and that growth of understanding which only years of close friendship can bring. My apologies are due to them for the many explanations offered at the simple fact that I did not write this book earlier because l did not want to. I knew that, if I wrote quickly, I should very soon repent of what l had written.
It would have been easy enough, on the strength of memory and a superficial glance through a mass of papers which Winifred left me, to construct a readable record of her life within a few months of her death. Anyone accustomed to writing books could produce such a volume, and she had not been a week in her grave before a number of publishers- though not my own- had invited me to do so. From the standpoint of sales such a course would doubtless have benefited my interests as well as theirs, but I cannot believe that it would have assisted Winifred’ reputation.
A hasty portrait may be good journalism, but almost without exception it is bad biography. The chief essential of biography is truth, and truth is seldom served by hurried studies however topical and efficient. In practice, such work usually proves to be short-lived to precisely the degree that it is topical.
The closer one person has been to another, the greater the need for time to elapse in order that the bitterness of loss and the arbitrary selections of memory may be modified by perspective and detachment, by the thorough investigation of material and most of all by the quiet process of unhurried reflection. Even within the past few months, many facts of Winifred’s life and character have become clear to me.
I can therefore only plead for understanding and forgiveness when I say that I could not have produced a truthful story of the best friend whose life has given me in the months directly follow her death.
Where have all the good cartoons gone?
Childhood will never be the same again. Remember Saturday mornings spent lounging on the sofa, hour after hour, watching your favorite cartoons? Could there have been a better reward for the long school week that had had to be endured? Bugs Bunny. Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse brought virtually live into our living rooms. Back then, they were in black and white, and back then they were meant to amuse, to entertain
It seems this has changed - and definitely for the worse. Now when you turn on the television on a Saturday or Sunday morning, you do so at your own risk! Be prepared to confront violence in all its animated glory: exploding bombs, failing buildings, blazing weapons, and bad guy after bad guy, I don’t see what is funny about this warped vision of our times and our society. Neither do I see what‘s worth watching on these programmes with such gruesome caricatures of good and evil. Who is responsible for children's programming these days?
It cannot be good for today's youth to be exposed with this type of entertainment. At best, they are missing out on the humor, sensitivity and moral lessons that they were to be had from the cartoons of old. At worst, their childish brains are being filled with scenes of non-stop violence and ideas that are morally corrupt. Childhood should be a time of innocence, short-lived as it may be in these turbulent times in which we live. Perhaps we should bear this in mind the next time we see our children glued to the TV on a Saturday morning.