Thursday, October 09, 2008

"Empowerment" in School . . .

Students make the grade recycling
“We want to empower the youth with knowledge they can use to improve the environment they live in,” said Lauren Barone, the authority’s school recycling coordinator who helped to design the Go Green program.
What knowledge? That certain numbers stamped on plastics mean they are recyclable while others are not?

This isn't about transferring knowledge . . . it's about training . . . training kids to respond to a particular stimulus (the number) in a particular manner (throw it in the correct bin) to produce a result that someone higher up (the Solid Waste Authority) deems an improvement.

It's all about controlling behavior.

The only thing "empowered" here is government authority.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Were they recycling in the past?? Hope so.

Anonymous said...

The touchy-feely overly politically correct language is pretty annoying but I'm not sure I have a problem with training the kids to recycle. I am not a greenie by any means and I can't stand most of the crap but the container recycling thing apparently is actually worthwhile.

People are pigs. I find discarded containers thrown from car windows onto my lawn fairly frequently. If I could catch these people I would have a hard time keeping myself from beating the crap out of them.

And schools are here to train kids. At the risk of sounding like someone in the education business, the fact is, many parents are not teaching these basics anymore. Now, when they start indoctrinating them with the "hunting is bad, reduce your carbon footprint, become vegan, blah, blah, blah" crap, then I will get upset.

Anonymous said...

Recycling is about controlling behavior?!?! you have got to be kidding.
Get your head out of your you know what!!!
Teaching children about recycling is a good thing. It teaches them about responsibility and choices. We owe it to ourselves to be educated on causal efficacy. Perhaps that knowledge can be put to good use and the youth of today can change the direction our environment is headed in. Obviously some of us haven't figured out that our actions can have a much larger impact on society than just what we see and hear in our own neighborhoods. The next time you are in wal-mart (we all know that you are a wal mart shopper) ask your fellow shopper if wal-mart had a negative impact on their communtiy I'm willing to bet they respond with a resounding NO. Idiots!
As for your assertion that the higher ups in solid waste are merely asking people to recycle as a control tactic, that is just plain stupid. From a business standpoint alone it would be far more cost effective to just pile it all up and set the garbage on fire! But then you would all be sueing the county because the smog gave you asthma....