Food and Energy
Science education that supports the development of students’
cognitive abilities that are needed to adapt and survive within the dynamic
stability of a hotter and drier planet.
Food and energy are two
of the most important fundamental influences upon our modern industrialized
society. The impact they have upon the well-being of civilization, as we know
it, will be profound in this 21st century.
Learning environments
need to reflect the relevance (value) and the exciting opportunities (choices
and control) that these challenges present in our modern world. Our modern
educational system has a duty to our children to deliver learning experiences that
match these critical issues that we all face as inhabitants on a changing
planet.
Thomas Friedman wrote
from his newest book titled, Thank you for being late, “So, at
a minimum, our educational systems must be retooled to maximize these needed
skills and attributes: strong fundamentals in reading and writing, coding and
math; creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration; grit,
self-motivation, and lifelong learning habits; and entrepreneurship and
improvisation – at every level.”
How do we begin to bring forth
this level of learning to prepare our children for the dynamic stability that
they will face in their lives? A
multidisciplinary approach to learning surmounts these challenges by linking
the learning of science to real-world
problems and with a mindset that is multidisciplinary in its approach to
fashioning solutions. A curriculum
emphasis on Food and Energy as a year-long project-based educational initiative
would be the ideal learning experience preparing our children for the world
that they will now face in their lifetime.
Energy is so completely
encompassing it is what everything is made of and it supports the organization
of all things living and inert. We
teach that energy is “the ability to produce change” and we have a great number
of ways to make this change happen once we have the energy, but the fundamental
issue is the resulting impact that the use of energy to support human
civilization has upon the ecosystem.
Food provides the
energy for life. Trillions of soil
microbes, insects, worms and organic nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium
set the stage for a rich proliferation of plants that blanket and feed our
world. Soil can facilitate the sequestration
of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, provide a mechanism to efficiently store
moisture and to house essential nutrient resources to facilitate the synthesis
of sugars, carbohydrates and proteins, which are the building blocks of all
things living in this world.
Complexity is the key
word that clearly describes the reliance humankind has upon the capacity of our
soils to produce food and our reliance upon abundant amounts of energy to “produce
change” within a time dependent growing season.
Students need to be aware of and to think critically about the mounting complexities
that we now face in a world of over 7 billion souls demanding access to increasing
amounts of energy and dealing with climate changes that are altering and suppressing
environmental factors that support plant growth. Students need to have some exposure, through
learning experiences at school, to the ebb and flow of these complexities that
are life-giving to humankind.
Physics, chemistry and
biology are the unforgiving players in the climate change experience our planet
now faces. We will all " rue the day" when their laws, rules and defined outcomes play mercilessly upon our environment. Students can
gain valuable insight into the effects of climate change and these laws of
science if they can think creatively about the science involved. They need to have the abilities to "play with
their thoughts", their questions, proposed solutions and their “what ifs..”
Science education in the 21st
century can provide the bridge for our children into this new world of “what
ifs..”
