KSB’s Reed knows value in educating children about environment

Children are not jaded yet. They are open to ideas and can adjust and adapt better than adults who often are set in their ways. That’s why we grown folks often try to educate kids to challenges such as drug abuse, smoking, misuse of alcohol, Internet dangers and protecting the environment.

Elizabeth Reed, director of Keep Sevier Beautiful, has been spending a lot of time in the classroom lately. By the end of last week she had visited 65 second-grade classrooms across Sevier County, teaching children about how they can make a difference in the way this county looks and the way its natural resources are protected.

It’s a good program, and Reed deserves praise for being involved in it. If you can get children to be aware of littering problems, pollution and beautification, they might just stay attuned to such an issue as they grow older.

When you have a class filled with 7- and 8-year-old children, you never know what you’ll hear from them or the kinds of questions they’ll ask. Keeps you on your toes, but Reed was ready for almost anything tossed her way during the classroom visits.

In order to make it easier to understand, Reed compared the Earth to their bedrooms to get across the consequences of tossing trash from the car or not keeping the grounds and streams clean. Mothers get upset when their kids maintain a messy bedroom, she said, and it’s the same way with our environment. Kids need to keep their rooms clean, and we all need to do our part to keep the environment clean. We may not share the bedroom, but we do share the Earth.

In Sevier County there is an added incentive to make things look as they should. We attract as many as 13 million visitors a year, and the impression we leave them can linger. Whether it’s courtesy or proper street signs or the look of our roadsides, we all create the impression that sticks with our guests. When you stay in a substandard hotel on your own travels or get treated rudely, you question the citizens or the management of the business. Same with our surroundings, and that’s the point Reed made to the impressionable children.

Youngsters this age are attentive, inquisitive and curious. They are thirsty for knowledge and want to be productive citizens. Their attention span may be limited, but their role in making this a good society doesn’t have to be. Reed understands this, as do the teachers who spend so many hours with the second-graders each school year.

If the children who heard Reed’s presentation can come away with a better understanding of why we need to be careful with the land around us, then we can create a generation ahead that will appreciate the fragile nature of what we have and work hard to preserve it.