How do we teach children to consider consequences?

Out on my run this morning we met a lady gathering the rubbish off a local beach. Hand fulls of it.

She said she does this every morning.

Every morning she cleans up after people who care-less to clean up after themselves.

We have education so backwards.

Why do we not have children learn at school to clean up after themselves, to go into community and clean up after others, to realise that the choice of littering, or polluting, has a consequence that others have to pay to attend to?

How do we teach children to consider consequences? Not just the short term ones, but the long term?

How are we not educating about the whole system? A polluted river in your local community has effects far far away. Should we care?

You might say that this is the role of the parent. But if the parent fails in this role, at the least children can be taught at school.

If education included active participation in community, insisted on consequence consideration as a habit, included an all-in-accounting consideration of costs and benefits, then the ease of companies trashing the environment might not be so simple to do.

Are those people who go to a beautiful beach and leave all their rubbish behind any worse than the corporate giants who care less about poisoned rivers, air, landfill?

I would imagine that the narrative behind the decision to litter, pollute, poison…is different for the beachgoer as it is for corporate CEO and Board, yet cut from the cloth of short term selfish interest.

I am grateful to the lady who cleans up after all the litterbugs. A silent act of community service, done with love.

Photo taken January 27th 2022

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