Little Greenies: Proof that Kids are Environmentalists
We are born with a natural concern for the environment—even if we don't always hang onto it
Jeffrey Kluger
TIME, 31 July 2013
EXTRACT:
To test where living things, particularly plants, fall on this do-no-harm spectrum, Training College researcher José Domingo Villaroel assembled a sample group of 118 boys and girls, ages 4 to 7, from local public schools. He started with the basics, showing the kids two sets of four pictures each—a dog, a tree a bird and a flower; and the sun, clouds, a car and a motorcycle—and asked which of them was alive and which not. That, as it turned out, was a trickier question than it would seem. The youngest kids particularly would often exclude the tree from the living things category but include the car or the motorcycle. Self-locomotion, it seemed, was the defining quality here.
