Culture & Celebrity (kids)

The Rainforest Alliance education program encourages schools to weave environmental topics into into their curricula. Instead of reading Curious George (a property of Universal Studios) the kids in this video become howler monkies bellowing with delight, breathing life into the grown-up TreeHugger's concern for "biodiversity." While teachers celebrate the difference between rainforest species, students make that same comparison between their own lives and those of children in other countries such as Guatemala or Ecuador. Students then complete an essay about their experiences, thereby fulfilling district initiatives in writing -- all while imagining far off foresty worlds as immediate, while empathizing with peers who live lives beyond computer screens. The creativity is so manifest that one grade-schooler transforms the potentially dry statistic "in the rainforest it can rain 400 inches in a year" into a bubbly tune that he performs for the camera. Seeing the vibrant colors of the kids' classroom in the video may transport some adults back in time, in their minds and in their feelings, to a more receptive place where what the eyes grasped became fertilizer for the imagination. For those smaller humans still in possession of that faculty, what could be more nourishing than the exciting vibrance of the rainforest? Not just for its colors, but for the very pulse of its life, an energy with which they still remain close. Where there may be room enough in a child's imagination for both Transformers and Jaguars, we at TreeHugger are of the firm opinion that if an opportunity cost is at hand, Transformers get the boot.

via: Susty.tv