Friday, May 26, 2006

What's wrong with this picture?

From a Raleigh, NC TV station - 'Clair' To Spread Clean Air Message Across Region:
A character modeled after a 10-year-old Chapel Hill student soon will be teaching youngsters across the region about the dangers of air pollution.

Clair, which is short for "clean air," is at the heart of a campaign being launched by Triangle Air Awareness to encourage residents to maintain the area's high quality of life by reducing air pollution.

"I hate to say it, but children listen a lot more closely. They go home and tell parents, 'We need to not drive so much. You need to turn off those lights when you leave the room.' They're very invested," clean air advocate Anne Galamb said.
They "go home" and hit up their parents with some ecoweenie propaganda they've learned? Where the heck were they? We knew the answer, of course:
"We also thought children would be more interested in hearing about clean air from somebody that was a child."

So, the organization enlisted McDougal Elementary School fifth-grader Madeline Taylor to play the role of Clair and found sponsors to finance a tour of area schools this fall.
Why is it that "professional educators" can always find classroom time for this sort of piffle, but can't manage to teach kids to read, write, or do arithmetic? One wonders how much time they would provide for a "spokestyke" named Neutron Nick who wanted to tell the kids about nuclear power, provided, of course, that his parents would let him skip class.

(Via Air Pollution News)