behaves in seawater. It also points to a dark future fate of our spe- cies if we do not robustly address this problem of treating the shared environment as a global garbage dump. The winning secondary


school entry ‘The grazing here is rubbish these days’ points at the effect our rubbish has on animals. How plastic kills ani- mals – the sea turtle is prob- ably the most widely publicised – is implicated in the sheep’s comment. The all-hands-on-deck phi-


losophy so beautifully sum- marised by the statement We are all crew on Spaceship Earth means it is permissible to include the help of animals, pets and even cuddly toys. Children respond well to this


winners is planned for 2017. An e-version of this calendar


is available to teachers who apply directly to us. Either with an email to gaiadance@btinternet.com, or through the web- site www.gaidancebooks.com


Other inspirations While my partner and I were forwarding this competition,


we learned of a rather different anti-litter project being conducted by a young man, Martin Dorey. He set up the first Ocean School at the other end of the U.K., in Devon. An Ocean School is similar to the green Forest Schools but focused on the sea and Martin is regularly invited to talk about his projects on television and at conferences. Martin also promotes the idea of a Two Minute Beach


Clean.2 By seeding the idea of litter-picking as something anyone can do on a beach-visit, he opened a quite different way of seeing litter-picking; as a habit or part of a regular routine. I quickly found myself doing two-minute beach cleans on the way to swim with the local seals first thing in the morning. It’s an ideal approach when a full two hours is just not possible. Closer to home for most Green Teacher readers, the Zero


Tolerance Policy of New York police in eradicating graffiti3 worked. Removing graffiti, the moment it appeared, had the seemingly magical effect of solving a long-standing prob- lem. My own belief in removing rubbish from my patch is based on the same belief.


The undercover stories of the winning


photographs Subtextually, each image tells a story with a serious mes- sage. The winning primary school entry, ‘Flattened by a giant litterball hailstone’ omits the child’s face making the image universal. In all probability, for most entrants, the inclusion of the child’s face would have been automatic. It is a powerful image, and an excellent composition photograph- ically. The huge polystyrene ball shows the way polystyrene


Page 14


expansive and imaginative approach to problem-solving. In the world of business, as a brainstorming technique, it is often the craziest ideas that, when made do-able, are clear winners in a problem-solving context. The fact indigenous cultures used any and all methods – singing, dancing, drama, model-making – to act out their needs, often survival needs, reinforces this whole brain approach and reveals its deepest root in our species.


Re-seeing stigma Stigma acts like an unspoken taboo. But it does raise a seri-


ous question. Evidence-gathering in a grassroots situation gives insights not otherwise available. The litter problem at the global level is publicised on television but little is done to reverse it, indicating a tacit cultural agreement to litter- blindness. The reaction of parents not wanting their daugh- ter to help is echoed culturally, worldwide. Einstein said that problems cannot be solved at the level they are created. The mind set that creates the problem is unfit, unable or unwill- ing to solve it. The paradigm shift is key to breaking into and out of this vicious circle.


The power of new words Not for one moment should we question the power of new


words to change perceptions, and short-form communica- tion by fulfilling the demand for the instant. To build a gen- eral eco-literacy in the minds of the young necessitates see- ing differently. To use expressions like litter-blindness and litteritis – the disease of mindless litter dumping – newly frames the activity. At grassroots level, it is then seen differ- ently, as contributing to lack of well-being if not actually ill- ness, much as does Nature Deficit Disorder. According to the internet, new words are invented at


the average rate of one a minute. It is a global phenomena. Green Teacher has introduced me to words I have never met with before. These are words and terms to describe a pres- ent situation which previously did not exist. From the pages of Green Teacher recently came biophilia, our genetic pre-


GREEN TEACHER 109


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