reply to post by ronnieray123
Everything you said is valid, you described it perfectly. Nothing we do here seems to have any hope of fixing it.
After all the different attempts nothing has changed, and in some cases gotten worse.
Entertain this thought for me.
Every person that has went into space has come back and said, I realize now that we are just a little blue dot in a great big universe. A handful of
people realizing this universal truth is not enough. Teaching a 40 year old man this and sending him home again does nothing,
Teaching one hundred, 22 year old collage students at a time this, each and every semester and then returning those kids home with that knowledge
changes the world. Each new group of students, the future business people, the future leaders will have a perspective that no other generation before
them has had.
How long has society talked and talked to no avail.......a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe it is time to start taking them where they can see
the picture instead of boring them telling them about it
I appreciate your point as well....
it's a good idea for training our next generation of leaders. Nevertheless, just because it hasn't worked
yet doesn't mean it
can't.
When my kids were young, I was working as a social worker, running a youth group for immigrant farm-workers' kids. They lived in cinderblock
"housing", out in a field. Each family had one room. ONE small room. The itinerant workers kept them very clean, but it was still little more
than a "shanty" -- four walls and a roof. My kids were stunned -- yes, I took them to see the "housing".
Perhaps instead of the moon, we could send those kids on overseas "apprenticeships" first .. to experience first-hand how the enslaved,
impoverished, oppressed and starving live on a day to day basis. We don't need to go nearly as far as the moon....although I agree the perspective
of seeing how tiny we are in the universe would be very impressive on impressionable youth.
Still, it's a bit of "detached" perspective. Like a zoo exhibit, not much more than a holographic image, or a text-book illustration. It's my
belief that putting the privileged (even if they're only working class kids who were given an education) youth into the midst of the muck and
desperation would open their eyes further.
Actually working among, meeting, and bonding with those in dire straits, who are ill, impoverished, and hopeless/dying, living among them, dealing
daily with their real situations, would go a long way to awakening people to the reality that so many billions of people face every day.
And we don't even have to go
that far....just a trip to a homeless camp, an urban core filled with blight, a city homeless shelter.....would
open up those young eyes.
Sure, I hoped I could "save" the world. I am now aged-out of the system, and acknowledge that it
seems hopeless....
but, I'm not ready to give up yet.
Thanks, though, for your innovative, thoughtful idea. It's certainly worth considering if all else continues to fail. Can we first hope that it
doesn't? Or, try to do both? Some kids directly into the Earth-based suffering, and some to the moon?
Peace
~wild