By Marc Bekoff - bekoffm@spot.Colorado.EDU
Children are inherent and intuitive curious naturalists.
They're sponges for knowledge, absorbing, retaining, and using new
information at astounding rates. We all know this, but often we forget
when we're helping to develop their roles as future ambassadors with
other animals, nature, and ourselves. Some are also future leaders on
whose spirit and good will many of us will depend. They will be other
animals' and our voices, indeed, voices of the universe. So, it makes
good sense to teach children well, to be role models, to infuse their
education with kindness and compassion so that their decisions are
founded on a deeply rooted, automatic reflex-like caring ethic. If we
don't, they, we, other animals, human communities, and environments will
suffer.
Recently, I've been fortunate to teach and have mutually
beneficial discussions with some fourth-graders at Foothills Elementary
School. We considered such topics as animal behavior, ecology,
conservation biology, and the nature of human-animal interactions. I was
astounded by the level of discussion. The class centered on the guiding
principles of Jane Goodall's world-wide Roots & Shoots program, whose
basic tenets are that every individual is important and every individual
makes a difference. The program is activity oriented and members partake
in projects that have three components: care and concern for animals,
human communities, and the places in which we all live together.
All the students had actively been engaged in projects
that fulfilled all three components. They had participated in, or
suggested for future involvement, such activities as recycling, being
responsible for companion animals, reducing driving, developing
rehabilitation centers for animals, helping injured animals, getting
companion animals from humane shelters, boycotting pet stores, tagging
animals so if they get lost people would know who they are, visiting
senior citizen centers and homeless shelters, punishing litterbugs, and
punishing people who harmed animals.
We discussed how easy it is to do things that make a
difference and also develop a compassionate and respectful attitude
towards animals, people, and environments. One student noted that by
walking the companion dog who lived with his elderly neighbor and
cleaning up after the dog, he performed activities that satisfied all
three components.
Some students had already developed very sophisticated
attitudes about human-animal interactions. One thought experiment in
which we engaged is called "the dog in the lifeboat." Basically, there
are three humans and one dog in a lifeboat and one of the four has to be
thrown overboard because the boat can't hold all of them. Generally,
when this situation is discussed, most people agree that all other
things being equal, reluctantly the dog has to go. One can also
introduce variations on the theme. For example, perhaps two of the
humans are healthy youngsters and one is an elderly person who is blind,
deaf, paralyzed, without any family or friends, and likely to die within
a week. The dog is a healthy puppy. The students admitted this was a
very difficult situation and that maybe just maybe the elderly human
might be sacrificed because he had already lived a full life, wouldn't
be missed, and had little future. Indeed, this is very sophisticated
thinking that perhaps the elderly person had less to lose than either of
the other humans or the dog. Let me stress that all students agreed that
this line of thinking was not meant to devalue the elderly human. And,
in the end, the students and most people reluctantly conclude that
regardless of the humans ages or other characteristics, the dog has to
go.
The level of discussion overwhelmed my considerations of
quality of life, longevity, value of life, losses to surviving family
and friends. But what really amazed and pleased me was that before we
ever got to discuss alternatives, all students wanted to work it out so
that no one had to be thrown overboard. Why did any individual have to
be thrown over they asked? Lets not do it. When I said that the thought
experiment required that at least one individual had to be tossed they
said this wasn't acceptable! I sat there smiling and thinking, now these
are the kinds of people in whom I'd feel comfortable placing my future.
Some ideas about how all individuals could be saved included having the
dog swim along the side of the boat and feeding her, having them all
switch off swimming, taking off shoes and throwing overboard all things
that weren't needed to reduce weight and bulk, and cutting the boat in
two and making two rafts.
All students thought that even if the dog had to go she
would have a better chance of living because more could be done by the
humans to save the dog than vice versa. Very sophisticated reasoning
indeed. I've discussed this example many times and never before has a
group unanimously decided that everyone must be saved.
I also was thrilled by the commitment of the teachers I
met. They were dedicated souls, and we should all be grateful that such
precious beings are responsible for educating future adults on whom
we'll be dependent. The bottom line is pretty simple: teach the children
well, treat the teachers well, and treasure all. Nurture and provide the
seeds of compassion, empathy, and love with all the nutrients they need
to develop deep respect for, and kinship with, the universe. All people,
other animals, human communities, and environments now and in the
future, will benefit greatly by developing and maintaining heartfelt
compassion that is as reflexive as breathing. Compassion begets
compassion -- there's no doubt about it.
Marc Bekoff teaches in Environmental, Population, and
Organismic Biology at CU-Boulder. Contact him (marc.bekoff@colorado.edu)
for information about Roots & Shoots programs for people of all ages or
go to www.janegoodall.org. His father is currently organizing a chapter
for "elders," sources of infinite wisdom.
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