Is your teacher scared of nature?

In my classroom I spoke to a teaching assistant who screamed when she saw a spider. I asked her not to do that, as it would encourage children to react in the same way. Another teacher asked his class to write a poem entitled, 'What I hate about spiders'. Yet another teacher swats wasps. In my class children know that if they keep still they will not be harmed if a wasp investigates them. They know how to carry stray bugs outside, and gently blow on them so as not to harm them when releasing them. I have always found that children love insects, bugs and arthropods and gastropods of all kinds, as well as larger animals. They want to learn more about them, to study them without hurting them.They sometimes change as they get older. They sometimes forget how to respect nature, and how to live in harmony with it. Are the adults in their lives to blame? Or do some people just change their reactions and their values as they grow up and age?
Dr Mark Spencer (who appeared on the BBC Museum of Life series) thinks the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of teachers, who are alienated from the natural world. Like me, he sees children as young naturalists, who can help to halt biodiversity loss in future, and who can lead the world in showing how all living things are inter-connected.
Is this a case of educating the educators, of teaching the teachers? Is it too late to teach grown-ups a genuine love and respect for nature if they haven't already got it? Or is it never too late to change your values? Could children teach their teachers how to love the natural world?
What do you think?
Daily Telegraph: 'Teachers scared of nature' 7.8.2010.

Message from a Gribble

You may not have heard of me but I am a Gribble. You could call me a small white crustacean that lives in the sea. I'm 4 millimetres long which is quite big from our point of view. I eat wood and seaweed. Wooden ships taste good, as do wooden jetties and piers. What we're really good at though, is clearing up driftwood and that's our natural role in life. It's good to think you have a purpose isn't it? We generally enjoy our lives, but we get scared too sometimes, like other creatures, and then we jam ourselves into our wood burrows and refuse to come out.
Now a rumour is going round Gribble society that you over-large humans are on our scent. Not because we nosh your piers and boats, but because we seem to have something you want. You think that the things our bodies break down the wood with (you call them enzymes apparently) could be used to produce sugar from wood or straw, and then this could be turned into something you really want badly, called biofuel.
What we Gribbles want to know is - why can't you big bullies leave us little creatures alone? We've been happy in the seas for millions of years. We don't want you taking our enzymes. What if you hurt us? Would you even care? As a Gribble I would like to complain about this treatment. I ask all Gribbles and Gribble supporters to support my new online petition, 'No graves for Gribbles.' And when I've signed it myself I'm going to barricade myself into my burrow.
Signed, G Gribble.

Scientists hope to make liquid biofuels based on digestive enzymes found in the gribble following research at the BBSRC Sustainable Bioenergy Centre.
First News 12th March 2010