Margaret M. Loos
Even the best laid plans go awry. However, a battery of alternative approaches to a subject and diversified activities are more likely to catch the fancy of the student. According to his talents and philosophy, an individual teacher may use any, all, or none of these strategies. Others are suggested in the books in the teachers’ bibliography, and of course every teacher has some that are ideal for his situation. The one criterion that is necessary for success is that the student must be able to see himself as part of the scenario. Learning cannot take place without motivation and if the student sees himself affected, stimulation to learn is more likely to occur.
The people in this country are very weight conscious, for good reason, since the lifestyle and abundance of calories available in all forms are conducive to overweight. Fortunes have been made in fad diets as well as in sensible weight reduction. The Scarsdale, high protein lecithin, water, and no-carbohydrate diets may be suspect to some, but people flock to try them. Diet clinics and behavior modification groups flourish. The youthful figure is the universal goal. Most students are aware of this and are culturally influenced to strive for sliminess, but their home backgrounds and readily available fast foods tip the scale against them. Many of the young have adopted extreme means to curb weight gain. At the same time, the environmental impact of highly processed, expensively packaged and widely distributed foods plus the economic pressure to overproduce is difficult to measure. However, the result is that the United States has a population ten to twenty percent overweight on the average in a world where food is the number one energy shortage. This leads to the first scenario,
YOU AND ENERGY
.
After discussing the human body as an energy system, a model for a system should be established with the divisions of Input, Work, Output (both desirable and undesirable). This model will be used in the second section of the unit
ENERGY AND THE CITY
to analyze the city as a system and other systems used in the city, home and industry.
A review of the history of energy usage and recent attempts to control its use will be examined with the emphasis on the particular problems of non-renewable sources. The newspapers will be monitored for new federal, state and city measures in energy control. At the end of the unit each student will be asked to write a position paper of one page or more on what he would like to see in his energy future.
ENERGY AND THE FUTURE
.
The filmstrip series,
The World of Energy
, from the National Geographic Educational Services will be used as a vehicle for continuity throughout the unit. No more than one strip will be used each week in conjunction with activities relating to the strips.
