The 3 R's and Education (by Antônio)

Dear folks, friends and classmates I’d like to share with you some information I’ve collected for a presentation last Tuesday and also some of my thoughts about education. The presentation was about the 3 R’s “concept” and was also an idea of how to combine the English teaching discipline with different topics.
I found out about the 3R’s “concept” while listening to a song of Jack Johnson. This song is part of the soundtrack of a movie called “Curious George”. The Curious George is an American cartoon that is regularly on TV. By the end of this writing I’ll provide some web sites so you can have a closer look at them.

The 3 R’s are items of the waste hierarchy and mean Reduce, Reuse and Recycle respectively. The waste hierarchy is composed by six items, which are show in order of importance in the pyramid below. The items at the top are the most effective policies and processes; unfortunately we still have little prevention compared to our production of waste. The aim of the waste hierarchy is to extract maximum benefits from products generating the minimum amount of waste.

Although there’s a lot of talking going on we are still far away from the ideal environmental/ecological correctness. My purpose with this piece of writing is to show you that we teachers have the obligation of teaching something more than English. If we don’t have this obligation, at least we have the choice of doing it. So please choose to teach your students how to be global citizens. Apart from teaching, we have to spread the idea that a local and individual action generates a global change. A local action now generates a global change in the future.

In my opinion we are privileged professionals because we have the opportunity to work with the next generation – children – they are the ones who can make the real change. We can change people’s mind and education is not only to transmit knowledge but also to allow our students to be able to consciously choose in this world of multiple choices. My concept of education is that our main purpose as educators is to provide, our students, information and skills that will allow them to understand the world they live in and how some social mechanisms work. In other words to fulfill them with information that will help them to change their selves as well as to choose according to their wills and objectives.

The desire of being useful to society combined with our love for the language are not the only things this profession requires. The will of helping our people to develop their self-knowledge and to make our students able to share and exchange their knowledge while creating possibilities through a two way road where everyone can learn and teach are also required. Education is meant to develop the students’ critic view of their selves, allowing them to be aware of what is going on, so they can’t be manipulated by the media and the hypocrisy of our politicians.
So be aware of what you’re teaching and what is your contribution to society as a teacher!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Web sites:
http://www.jackjohnsonmusic.com/home/
http://pbskids.org/
http://www.curiousgeorgemovie.com/