Age of pragmatism
City kids have come to realise very early that green worry won’t take them much further in life

By Meha Mathur
The age of innocence, that is what school days are. One lesson form your class teacher about the need to save water and electricity, and you get back home and impose an emergency at home, giving a piece of mind to parents if they leave on a bulb or a fan. You sincerely believe in using public transport, and frequently take part in river cleaning and environment drives in your school. School over, the concern for environment lingers on into college life, and in some cases, even into working life. It’s adults, who have been through that green phase, but who are catching up with the world in the rat race, who give a short-shrift to environment, switching over to ACs and sedans.

Or so I thought. My recent visits to a few schools opened my eyes to how simplistic I have been. During a visit to my alma mater for a feedback session on the new-look Educare, the Educare team held a session with the cream of classes XI and XII. We were mighty impressed with their confidence and clarity on everything — what career they want to pursue, what do they expect from a magazine, what do they read, why a certain page looks attractive, why the other does not appeal to them. The topper of class X, now pursuing science in class XI, looking at our 1857 Story Special, said he liked it, because “History is interesting. Only there should be no exam in the subject.” They had a view on everything, from GK to our technology page to careers section.

We then opened the Ecologic page. We received blank looks. “Doesn’t the page excite you,” we asked. “We don’t read about environment,” they answered in unison. This time there was silence on our side. It took us some time to absorb this piece of information. After all, environmental degradation has been a top concern in the last few months, following greatly worrying reports of melting of Arctic ice, strange climatic patterns like an early spring in the US and a rainy May and June in India, the coming to the limelight of Dr RK Pachauri’s team’s work that the world has limited time to save itself from a catastrophe. And schools, if I am not mistaken, are particular enough to have these news items read in assemblies, cuttings on environment pasted on notice boards, and students sent for environmental projects. Who can forget the role schools played in the anti-cracker drive, wherein a lot of school children had pledged not to burst crackers ever in future?

Was it a coincidence that I was interacting with a sample of students that was not representative of the school? Could it be that the apathy to environment was restricted to this school? That could not be the case, as I had been to the same school. Could it be that students are not only not reading about environment, they are not reading anything serious? Again, why should I presume, as, on every other issue the group had given very informed reply.

As I looked at their determined faces, I knew that the students knew what they were saying, and what they wanted in life. And contrary to what I have been feeling about young idealism, they have realised early on in life that career progression and environment concern, which entails some restraint and sacrifices, are opposed to each other. There was no pretension about the need to save environment, no lip service to ‘eco-friendly life’ and ‘sustainable development’. But perhaps they are still children at heart, not knowing what glib talk is about.

—The author is the Executive editor of Management Compass and Educare