Change Happens

On Friday there were questions about getting other people to care about environmental issues. To some, this may seem a daunting task, even hopeless, but if you've been around as long as I have, you've seen amazing changes in American life that can give you more hope for the future. On this subject I thought I'd share two short videos. They're not about environmental issues, but they do give a perspective on change. And they're very entertaining.

The first one, American Time Capsule, was made in the late 60s and is a high-speed visual history of the United States. Less than three minutes, in fact. Fast enough? That's followed by American History Rap, a funny rap history of the U.S. by some very ambitious high school students.

The Story of Stuff

This movie fits in perfectly with Doug Cohen's discussion of sustainability last Friday. There's an article on it on the front page of today's NY Times (web edition). The video has gone viral, with over six million web viewings.

As the Times article explains, most textbooks in this area are hopelessly out of date:

Many educators say the video is a boon to teachers as they struggle to address the gap in what textbooks say about the environment and what science has revealed in recent years.

“Frankly, a lot of the textbooks are awful on the subject of the environment,” said Bill Bigelow, the curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, a quarterly magazine that has promoted “The Story of Stuff” to its subscribers and on its Web site, which reaches about 600,000 educators a month. “The one used out here in Oregon for global studies — it’s required — has only three paragraphs on climate change. So, yes, teachers are looking for alternative resources.”

Dumb Americans

This is that news segment from Australian television about dumb Americans that I showed at our May 8th orientation meeting. Very funny, maybe exaggerated, but there are a lot of statistics that show it's not all that inaccurate.





And here are some real interesting links on the subject:

Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?
NY Times review of a recent book on the subject.
GeoTube Videos
The YouTube of geography videos.
Geographically Dumb Americans
A survey conducted by National Geographic magazine

Are You a Dumb American?
Take the quiz yourself!