When we look at Oyster River in terms of Adaptability, what do we think? I think of Oyster River and its changes or its attempts to be changed. For example, The Oyster River Community had a vote on whether or not to construct a turf stadium for not only the students of Oyster River High School, but for the whole district. That bill was quickly turned down by the people of the OR District because of money. Building these expensive fields would increase taxes for people all over the community. According to Gaylord Nelson's five characteristics, he said that adaptability requires a diversified economy, educated citizens, and a spirit of solidarity.
I think that the Oyster River High School doesn't like to adapt to new things unless it's forced upon. When something is optional and a few kids can create changes, it doesn't seem as effective as if an administrator or teacher forced change somewhere in the school. For example, out of all the four years I’ve been at ORHS, I've been constantly hearing that our school doesn't recycle and everything gets trashed. The many students of ORHS blame it on the janitors and don't do a single thing about it. Why doesn't anyone change this and volunteer their time to sort out the recycled waste with the actual waste? Talk is what we love to do, but committing and actually taking action for something you said is a completely different story. If enough people participated, took responsibility and committed towards change such as sorting the recycled waste, carpooling to school, picking up trash after lunch, etc., then we would be getting somewhere.
Gaylord Nelson is completely right when he says that in order to establish adaptability, a community needs to have educated citizens and its citizens need to have feelings, take responsibilities, and have some sort of interest for their community. Ignorant students are constantly saying how driving their car to school has an affect on the environment, or saying, “Why should I recycle if the school doesn’t actually recycle and puts everything in the same trash stash.” A lot of people in our school just don’t care. They feel as if keeping ORHS sustainable is not a concern and it has no purpose and a lot of students just don’t want to have the responsibility of keeping a school sustainable. There are definitely some students and teachers who care, are responsible, and try whatever they can to make ORHS sustainable, but it’s not enough. So much of the ORHS students don’t care, that it’s going to take us a very long time to adapt to a maintainable and sustainable school environment.
Changing ORHS' sustainability is a hard task and it needs a lot of involvement with not just students, but teachers and administrators as well. If the strong words of the teachers and administration got to the students, something would start happening and we could change the sustainability at ORHS. The administration has done a pretty good job of putting one or more recycling bins in each classroom, but the students have done a pretty bad job choosing between the trash can and the recycling bin. Custodians don't have time to sort out recycled and non-recycled material; they have a whole school to look after! Students like us that are in an environmental science class should start by keeping this system organized so we can eventually adapt to sorting everything out and not have problems with recycling.
Final Assessment: Based on this article, it seems to me was I mostly criticized the sustainability at ORHS. I was just trying to show how much more we need to do to adapt into a sustainable environment. We’re at a point where half the student body cares about our school and how it ends up, then the other half just doesn’t care and doesn’t see a purpose for keeping our school sustainable.
I’d probably give our school somewhere in the C range because the whole school is basically split down the middle with one side caring and the other not. We can improve this through more propoganda of the issues to create more awareness.
I think that the Oyster River High School doesn't like to adapt to new things unless it's forced upon. When something is optional and a few kids can create changes, it doesn't seem as effective as if an administrator or teacher forced change somewhere in the school. For example, out of all the four years I’ve been at ORHS, I've been constantly hearing that our school doesn't recycle and everything gets trashed. The many students of ORHS blame it on the janitors and don't do a single thing about it. Why doesn't anyone change this and volunteer their time to sort out the recycled waste with the actual waste? Talk is what we love to do, but committing and actually taking action for something you said is a completely different story. If enough people participated, took responsibility and committed towards change such as sorting the recycled waste, carpooling to school, picking up trash after lunch, etc., then we would be getting somewhere.
Gaylord Nelson is completely right when he says that in order to establish adaptability, a community needs to have educated citizens and its citizens need to have feelings, take responsibilities, and have some sort of interest for their community. Ignorant students are constantly saying how driving their car to school has an affect on the environment, or saying, “Why should I recycle if the school doesn’t actually recycle and puts everything in the same trash stash.” A lot of people in our school just don’t care. They feel as if keeping ORHS sustainable is not a concern and it has no purpose and a lot of students just don’t want to have the responsibility of keeping a school sustainable. There are definitely some students and teachers who care, are responsible, and try whatever they can to make ORHS sustainable, but it’s not enough. So much of the ORHS students don’t care, that it’s going to take us a very long time to adapt to a maintainable and sustainable school environment.
Changing ORHS' sustainability is a hard task and it needs a lot of involvement with not just students, but teachers and administrators as well. If the strong words of the teachers and administration got to the students, something would start happening and we could change the sustainability at ORHS. The administration has done a pretty good job of putting one or more recycling bins in each classroom, but the students have done a pretty bad job choosing between the trash can and the recycling bin. Custodians don't have time to sort out recycled and non-recycled material; they have a whole school to look after! Students like us that are in an environmental science class should start by keeping this system organized so we can eventually adapt to sorting everything out and not have problems with recycling.
Final Assessment: Based on this article, it seems to me was I mostly criticized the sustainability at ORHS. I was just trying to show how much more we need to do to adapt into a sustainable environment. We’re at a point where half the student body cares about our school and how it ends up, then the other half just doesn’t care and doesn’t see a purpose for keeping our school sustainable.
I’d probably give our school somewhere in the C range because the whole school is basically split down the middle with one side caring and the other not. We can improve this through more propoganda of the issues to create more awareness.
3 comments:
GREAT STUFF
Not sure propoganda is necessarily what we want - perhaps education is a better way to think about it. Perhaps student leaders changing the culture of apathy to one of caring - both for people and the planet - a little Rachel's challenge eco-fied.
You make many good points here - your point about not changing unless rules are in place is an interesting one. Does anyone really like rules? But here you are implying that rules seem to be needed - interesting! Isn't it?
In terms of recycling - it would be good to update this after our new recycling process has been running for a while!
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