Home // // // The planet near death

The planet near death

Duration: 1

In this first meeting, the students are introduced to the basic idea that governs the program and its structure.

We have a general discussion about the environmental issues that plague our planet during the last decades.

The students are asked to “read” the cartoon presented, a thing they will do in all the following meetings. We point out the fact that sometimes the cartoon may not be funny but very serious and bitter instead. The “reading” – analysis can be carried out at many levels:

• At the first level, the children just observe the actual cartoon: A lady on a hospital bed, covered with a blanket that depicts the map of Earth. Her condition is bad, as we can see from the diagram placed in front of the bed. She certainly lies in the intensive care unit, as indicated by the devices behind her.
• At a second level, we interpret the meaning of the cartoon: The lady is Earth (the blanket acts symbolically as an indicator) and is in danger of dying, being as she is in the intensive care unit.
• At a third level, we further discuss the meaning of the cartoon: The bad condition of the lady is linked to the phenomenon of desertification, just like her health diagram is linked to the lines of the arid earth seen on the hospital floor.

Finally, the children are asked to draw their own pictures, having in mind the previous discussion, the ideas they saw in the cartoon and the image conventions needed in order to depict sickness, death and disaster. Alternatively, they are asked to write their own texts describing the cartoon presented or draw their own pictures.