Good for you to draw our attention to the loss of teaching much of anything about the real world in our schools. Kids may hear about dwindling cheetahs or elephants but very little about the flora and fauna near by. I have found many adults are also not very knowledgeable of our plants and wildlife. Trees and bushes and birds may be the best they can do when identifying what they are seeing. I only wish kids today could have teachers as I did, who took us on walks in the fall and spring to have a guided tour of what nature was doing!
A few years ago I was leading a birding walk in the local arboretum - it was probably the best migration period birding of my life with warblers everywhere. A chap asked what we were doing, at that point we were over 60 species for the morning. He refused to believe me ... "I have walked here several times a week for almost all my life and all there ever is are blackbirds and sparrows". Too many people like that - it wasn't that he was not interested, he was simply ignorant.
That is a shocking statistic! I couldn't imagine my childhood without dandelions and conkers.
Good for you to draw our attention to the loss of teaching much of anything about the real world in our schools. Kids may hear about dwindling cheetahs or elephants but very little about the flora and fauna near by. I have found many adults are also not very knowledgeable of our plants and wildlife. Trees and bushes and birds may be the best they can do when identifying what they are seeing. I only wish kids today could have teachers as I did, who took us on walks in the fall and spring to have a guided tour of what nature was doing!
A few years ago I was leading a birding walk in the local arboretum - it was probably the best migration period birding of my life with warblers everywhere. A chap asked what we were doing, at that point we were over 60 species for the morning. He refused to believe me ... "I have walked here several times a week for almost all my life and all there ever is are blackbirds and sparrows". Too many people like that - it wasn't that he was not interested, he was simply ignorant.
Thanks for sharing my post!