L

et'€™s face it. The younger generation does not care enough about the environment. It shows in the way they prefer to live virtually rather than in reality.

Living in a technologically advanced generation has taken its toll on the types of activities children engage in.

Instead of taking on gardening, cooking or walking in parks as hobbies, children are so engrossed in their cell phones, tablets, video games and other things modern technology can offer.

I think these gadgets have brought our kids farther away from nature.

Sure, schools offer trips to farms where kids can harvest vegetables and feed livestock or do some milking, but this has become a tourist attraction instead of an activity that can be done in our own backyard as part of their daily chores.

We have come to a point where the act of nurturing Mother Nature has almost ceased to exist.

We cannot blame these kids totally. After all, it is because of the parents that they have grown so uncaring of Mother Nature. It is the older generation that caused many of the forests and rice fields to be converted into residential areas.

It is also the older generation that caused wild plants and animals to lose their homes and caused the extinction of many of them.

How could these kids know that there are fewer forests left and that many wild animals are about to be extinct when at the time they were born this was already the situation?

Unfortunately, these kids are the ones who will inherit what we bequeath. And since we have left them so little it is important that we teach them to care and nurture what is left.

The youth should be advocates of their own future and it is our role to help them nourish what they have left.

The youth should be aware of the consequences of being detached from what is giving them their sustenance. It is not money that can help them survive, for what is money if there are no goods to buy? The basic needs of human existence come from nature and it is because of nature that life is sustained.

Education is a very important vehicle for bringing them from ignorance to wisdom so they can have control over what we have destroyed. Let us teach about respect for nature in schools so that the younger generations can understand and can take part in restoring the balance of nature.

Let us encourage activities that can bring them closer to nature, such as gardening, tree planting, recycling and many more.

Let us promote the use of renewable energy to give time to replenish some of our resources and to prevent the total exhaustion of our natural energy sources.

We should encourage them to be more active in participating in campaigns that will protect wildlife.

I hope more schools will see that this is an urgent call if we ever want to save Mother Earth.

We'€™d rather teach the new generation to prepare themselves and their children for life beyond this planet.

However, before Mars is ready to accept human habitation, I think it is best if we try to save the Earth first.

Sheila Robles Ruswandi
Teacher
Sumedang, West Java