0 My children still live in our village

If you want to be universal,
sing your village.

-Leo Tolstoy

Arne Duncan wants your children prepared "to participate in the global economy."
I want our kids to learn a little bit about the natural world.

I took the AP Biology students out to the Bloomfield Green today, ostensibly to study ecological relationships. They're only here for a few more weeks before they're off to save the global economy, and I thought poking around a few dandelions might serve them better than anything else I might offer under fluorescent lights.

A honey bee doing her part in our local economy.

 
At least one of my lambs had never seen a honey bee before, and while I have no doubt she has the tools to become one of the finest international trade lawyers ever to grace our land, I still have her here in Bloomfield for a few weeks, and I want her to remember what home feels like.

If you've never seen a honey bee up close, you're a long way from home.

It's not the homeless in Bloomfield who are wrecking my town, though--it's the homeless in D.C., sitting under fluorescent lights, scouring abstract charts, manipulating statistics, and dictating policy that only alienates our children more from the one world they can ever truly know--the ground beneath their feet.

I suspect the power folks are not happy people, but I have no way to tell, and I am not interested in Arne's happiness quotient anyway. I do care, however, about the happiness of our children here in Bloomfield, and Arne's ill-thought journeys into education policy have affected my ability to teach children about things that matter, about lives worth living.

Not saying we need to make honey bees part of any national curriculum.
Just saying if a honey bee is part of the local fauna, and you want to know anything about the world, you should see a honey bee.

The Tolstoy quote was lifted from Bill McKibben's Hope, Human and Wild.