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Find out about the classic activity book Science Is... |
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Find out about the award-winning bestseller Dream |
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A HOME WE CARE FOR AND SHARE
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At over 4.5 billion years old, composed mostly of rock and with 70% of its surface covered with water, it has a diameter of 12,756 km (7,926 miles), one moon, one sun, a current population of over 6.5 billion people and growing, 7 continents, and 194 countries. That's our world.
Our World is also one of the Legacy Project's banner programs. It explores the world around us and our role in it – past, present, and future. How can you think globally and act locally? How can we all live more sustainably with our environment? How can we better understand other people and cultures that live in our communities or a continent or more away from us?
One of the resources that supports the Our World program is the classic activity book Science Is.... The result of eight years of research, including classroom testing, Science Is... has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The book is filled with more than 450 activity ideas, attention-getters, experiments, projects, puzzles, games, and stories. It covers all areas of science and emphasizes exploring our world through subject areas like The Environment, Rocks, Plants, and Living Creatures. It can be used with all ages.
With its themes of dreams and goals for ourselves and our world, the award-winning Dream book also supports the Our World program.
We're developing new books for the Our World program, some inspired by the arboretum and environmental research that will be done at the new Legacy Center. We also have free online activities and guides available now, and we'll be adding more.
The environment poses the quintessential intergenerational challenge. Global warming, destruction of rain forests, contamination of fresh and coastal waters, and depletion of the ozone layer all threaten the future of our planet. Many adults are deeply concerned about the environmental quality of the world their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will inherit. And today's young people are perhaps better educated about the environment than any other generation before them – and eager to learn more and take action. In the words of Adlai Stevenson:
We travel together as passengers on a little spaceship – spaceship Earth – dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and the love we give our fragile craft.
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Which brings us to another global challenge. Our planet has been around for billions of years. It was only about 50 years ago though that we saw Earth as a whole, photographed for the first time from space. It was a tiny globe surrounded by darkness. The photographs emphasize just how small this planet is. Today, there are over 6.5 billion human beings walking its surface. As our world becomes increasingly interdependent, it is becoming even smaller. More and more people bump into each other more and more often. In centuries past, if you didn't like what was happening in one corner of the globe, you could pack up, move to a large uninhabited area, and start a new country. No more. There are few large, uninhabited areas left. And we are all interconnected in ways we have never been before in history. We all have a responsibility – to ourselves and to our children and grandchildren – to do more than we are doing in this world to resolve conflicts in a way that is constructive rather than destructive. No more critical legacy challenge faces us than how we can learn to live together and deal constructively with what can far too easily become violence that leads to more violence too horrible to even dare to imagine.
From an anthropological perspective, the human beings alive today are descended from the same small group of people, our common grandmothers and grandfathers, who lived thousands and thousands of years ago. At the same time, anthropologists have identified more than fifteen thousand distinct ethnic groups on the planet. Our challenge is to recognize our common humanity while making allowances for these differences. In the spirit of acting locally, one of the places we can start is in our communities, specifically in our schools. And so a Safe Schools activity set is part of the Our World program.
As human beings, we have incredible potential. Community and peace building is based on the hope that we can tap into that potential. It doesn't offer an easy or quick solution. It is an ongoing process of learning for young and old. We are born with an urge to play and create, to be curious and inventive, to experiment and explore. Our education either affirms these tendencies or smothers them. Education – in the broadest sense of the term – is central to community and peace building. Said Maria Montessori, "Preventing conflicts is the work of politics; establishing peace is the work of education." Education means listening, asking questions, and seeking to understand the nature of a problem. It means looking at the problem from your own perspective as well as the perspectives of others. It means learning skills and using them creatively, balancing a concern for yourself with a concern for the larger community. It means building on the past while finding new ways for people to live together peacefully in an increasingly shrinking world that also needs our care and protection.
Start your Our World journey:
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>>> The classic hands-on activity book
Science Is...
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>>> The inspiring bestseller Dream
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>>> Free online Our World activities –
The Environment, Safe Schools
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>>> Safe Schools overview
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>>> Our World guides
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>>> Posters
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>>> Contests
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>>> World Dream Chest
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>>> Dream Exhibit
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>>> Workshop and school visits
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>>> Legacy Center
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>>> Create your Life Statement
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