Friday, April 11, 2008

BOTANICAL GARDENS: SOCIETY'S GREAT MENACE

I love it when smart people say fool things:
In a candid conversation with an audience here at the Aspen Environment Forum, eminent biologist/naturalist EO Wilson said soccer moms are killing off bio-education because they don’t let their children experience nature...In what he calls the “soccer mom syndrome” Wilson said the worst thing a parent can do for a child is to take him or her to a botanical garden where all the trees are marked and labeled. Instead, “Go to the seashore and give them a pail and bucket. Let them experience nature…and then come back and ask questions,” Wilson said.
Thanks, doc! This totally gets me out of taking the kids to the library, that horrible place where all the books are marked and labeled. Better to send them outside to experience nature by reading a candy wrapper some kid dropped on our lawn.

I will leave for others the deliciousness of an environmentalist telling people in Colorado to go to the seashore, regardless of how many Aspenites can simply hop their Gulfstreams back to Malibu to do just that.

No comments: