The main purpose of education is to generate awareness. Images are an effective platform to educate the masses by capturing their attention. They also elicit emotions of viewers, for instance, the image above shows the ingredients of a sushi obtained from the ocean are replaced with plastics. This is a powerful image that informs viewers that we are actually ingesting plastic when we ingest our seafood because the ocean is polluted with plastic to the extent that much of the seafood we consume contains plastic in one form or another.

Besides informing the public, education can come in other forms such as to teach people how to behave in an environmentally conscious manner. It is a large component of governmental, NGOs and individual efforts because if people know nothing, they are unable to start taking action. Education is where values, beliefs, attitudes and eventually action stem from.

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Children

Education is largely effective for children as they also experience emotions when they see marine animals being hurt and suffering from plastics that are in the ocean due to the actions of man. Children are impressionable and they have a sense of righteousness, they feel for nature and naturally wish to eliminate the factors that are destroying it.

As a little project, I started to teach the children (age 9 to 12) at my workplace about plastics in the oceans for them to learn about what is happening to our oceans and its occupants, and also to allow them to begin their conservation efforts at a young age no matter how small their actions may be. The children were asked to write reflections on what they have learnt from the the film ‘Plastic Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ after watching it, and below are some of their thoughts. Do click on the smaller images to enlarge.

Warning: there may be spelling errors, bad grammar, and/or incorrect information in the following images.

 

All the reflections above came entirely from the children as I did not teach them what to write on their papers (except for the spelling of Bisphenol A), it is from their own observation of the film. It is evident that they are receptive towards being environmentally conscious and are all willing to commit to taking actions to help alleviate the plastic pollution in the oceans. This, in my opinion, is the greatest reward for educating children.

 

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Next, about the author.

Previously, individual efforts.