Bring the Oil Spill Into the Classroom

The University of Minnesota this fall will offer a course entitled “Oil and Water: The Gulf Oil Spill of 2010.”  According to Miranda Taylor’s article in The Minnesota Daily, “the class will address the current crisis in the Gulf of Mexico by educating students on the history and ecology of the Gulf, the makeup of the Louisiana economy and the impact of past oil spills on humans and the environment.”

What a fantastic idea, an idea that ought to be replicated in thousands of classrooms—and at millions of dinner tables—across the nation.

One frustration a lot of kids have with school is that they have a hard time seeing a connection between what they’re being taught and what matters in their lives.  Although we don’t always use them well or purposefully, bringing in “current events” offers potentially rich opportunities to help kids to feel the relevance they need.  Sadly, a current event of the magnitude and duration of the current oil spill crisis represents a golden opportunity for teachers at every level.

Every year millions of students across the nation write research papers.  Pause for a moment to imagine some of the possible, unplannable positive consequences of having all those millions of papers address this single environmental and economic calamity.  In my fantasy, a student in Omaha comes up with a creative clean-up solution that his teacher passes on to a friend at the EPA.  And a group of camp friends from throughout the Pacific Northwest use Facebook to launch a grassroots movement demanding both a personal and a national commitment to alternative energy. 

Who knows what might happen?  I say it’s worth a try.