Anyone else keeping an eye on this. It seems to be the elephant in the room nobody is addressing. We need to do something about this. There are way too many people.
Anyone want to contribute to a discussion on realistic ways as a species we can control this problem before its too late?
There are many people at work trying to address it but there's a very difficult road ahead. It's a real issue, particularly in conjuction with urbanisation and resource consumption (both of which are continuing rapidly).
There are a number of responses/concerns. Education in developing nations is important; incentives for fewer/no children (through voluntary sterilisation if need be); developing new ways to work with high density areas; appropriate resource extraction, consumption and allocation etc. Much of this has been explored in the past. This issue is nothing new, but the the concerns are even more valid today.
The Brundtland Report and Limits to Growth are some earlier points of reference. Integrated sustainable responses are the way to go, despite how difficult they are to develop and implement. Some say there's a bit of wiggle room but that's not the point. It's apparent that overpopulation isn't a single problem to be looked at alone but a largely interlinked global matter (social, environmental, economic etc).
Overpopulation is kinda tricky. Try to control it too much and we end up in a zombie apocalpse or sci fi movie.
Sidenote: My mother cannot resist reminding me that she is old enough to be a grandmother yet has no grandkids. And if you know me you will know that I am no where near parenthood. So I'm doing my part yo.
EDIT: ignore my ramblings. Jib is much more on topic yo.
I know that my generation ( the millenial generation) is having far less children (at least here in the United States) than the generations past. A lot of that has to do with a sobering view of the economy and finances.
Well Ken Robinson (everyone should look him up, unless you want me to write essays) says the overpopulation crisis, most of all, calls for a change in the paradigm of education. The essense of his work is the idea that the current conventions of learning and assessment favor test standardization which force students to, as anyone would know, think inside the box. More importantly (and less obviously) they make learning too abstract and failure too literal. Basically the concept that someone should separate learning and assessment the way we do in schools is archaic. In schools we're expected to learn weeks/days before a test and then we get one chance. Technically we always have some form of second chances but those are obviously always stigmatizing.
This makes failure the worst thing ever even though failure is, literally, the essence of learning. You can't separate learning and failure and you can't design a system of education that does that and then expect to not limit studens with unnecessary anxiety and distractions from learning. In the end students are prevented from learning because not failing a test is more important than learning.
What's worse is that with each day the world gets more and more complicated exponentially. We're using a system of education that was mostly untouched since its creation in the 19th century (it was also designed for rich kids mind you) and has the quality of industrializing learning. As the antithesis of creativity and critical thinking, industralized education is really the last nail in the coffin. In a sense we don't need resources as much as we need the minds equipped with enough problem solving tools (namely creative and critical minds) to figure out how to deal with shortage of resources. Or whatever other problems we're about to face.
Robinson says the alternative would be a system where learning and assessment happens simultaneously and that would be a system where a very small part of assessment is final. Video Gaming and information systems are the best scenarios along with anything else that suggests a climate-control-mode of teaching instead of command-control.
So nothing can be done about overpopulation (nothing that wouldn't be a crime that is) but a lot can be solved with enough thinking power.
Cop 223 wrote:There are many people at work trying to address it but there's a very difficult road ahead. It's a real issue, particularly in conjuction with urbanisation and resource consumption (both of which are continuing rapidly).
There are a number of responses/concerns. Education in developing nations is important; incentives for fewer/no children (through voluntary sterilisation if need be); developing new ways to work with high density areas; appropriate resource extraction, consumption and allocation etc. Much of this has been explored in the past. This issue is nothing new, but the the concerns are even more valid today.
The Brundtland Report and Limits to Growth are some earlier points of reference. Integrated sustainable responses are the way to go, despite how difficult they are to develop and implement. Some say there's a bit of wiggle room but that's not the point. It's apparent that overpopulation isn't a single problem to be looked at alone but a largely interlinked global matter (social, environmental, economic etc).
prince0gotham wrote:Well Ken Robinson (everyone should look him up, unless you want me to write essays) says the overpopulation crisis, most of all, calls for a change in the paradigm of education. The essense of his work is the idea that the current conventions of learning and assessment favor test standardization which force students to, as anyone would know, think inside the box. More importantly (and less obviously) they make learning too abstract and failure too literal. Basically the concept that someone should separate learning and assessment the way we do in schools is archaic. In schools we're expected to learn weeks/days before a test and then we get one chance. Technically we always have some form of second chances but those are obviously always stigmatizing.
This makes failure the worst thing ever even though failure is, literally, the essence of learning. You can't separate learning and failure and you can't design a system of education that does that and then expect to not limit studens with unnecessary anxiety and distractions from learning. In the end students are prevented from learning because not failing a test is more important than learning.
What's worse is that with each day the world gets more and more complicated exponentially. We're using a system of education that was mostly untouched since its creation in the 19th century (it was also designed for rich kids mind you) and has the quality of industrializing learning. As the antithesis of creativity and critical thinking, industralized education is really the last nail in the coffin. In a sense we don't need resources as much as we need the minds equipped with enough problem solving tools (namely creative and critical minds) to figure out how to deal with shortage of resources. Or whatever other problems we're about to face.
Robinson says the alternative would be a system where learning and assessment happens simultaneously and that would be a system where a very small part of assessment is final. Video Gaming and information systems are the best scenarios along with anything else that suggests a climate-control-mode of teaching instead of command-control.
So nothing can be done about overpopulation (nothing that wouldn't be a crime that is) but a lot can be solved with enough thinking power.
Wow these were the kinds of responses I was hoping for. Very eye opening and well said. Looks like the culture shift needs to be in education in order to start finding a solution. In your opinion do you all think that a dramatic change in education is a vehicle we can put into practice or will it continue to be more of an academic based theory?
