JOE'S CORNER

A toolkit for little Ecological Engineers

Recently I was watching my little boy playing intensively with some odd branches, roots and pieces of bark. After a while, I asked him: "Boy, what are you doing there?" "Pa, there's a fire in the tree over there and I need to call my friend at the fire brigade. So that he comes and brings his huge red fire truck with him and puts out the fire." And started wailing the typical sound of sirens: "Wiiiiiiiiii - wiiiiiiiiii - wiiiiiiiiii".

I looked over to the big tree he was pointing to (no fire anywhere). "But..." I started to say. "Hush," said my wife who had witnessed the scene - "don't you disturb him. He's putting together his world, he's learning, don't you see?"

A showcase of constructivism, I thought, and noticed that he was using everything around him as tools for his play - roots and branches for wires, pieces of bark for the clawkeyboard, a short thick piece of wood as receiver, thus preparing a whole toolbox out of nothing.

"Wife", I said, "if a constructed wetland would wail like a siren or roar like a motorbike, I am sure the dryfolk* youngsters would want to become Ecological Engineers instead of firemen or policemen. If there were something spectacular about them. Not always this slow grooooooooowing and waiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiting and obseeeeeeerving all the time."

"You can put some really loud frogs in a terrarium with fast growing bamboo", she said. "Doing what?" I snapped. "Being loud and fast", she smiled. "Nope", I said, "needs to be a better idea. It would have to be like the little chemicist's toolkits I have seen in their catalogues. Where the kids can assemble a system from pieces and try out how it works, and disassemble it and try again, and so on".

"So what would you put into that 'toolkit' ", she asked. "Everything it takes", I said, "lots of seeds, some clay for lining ponds, some sand for filter media, a few unbreakable window panes for a little glass house, a manual with fascinating experiments and proposals for system setups. Imagine that we'd train young planetary engineers with it, who would later on colonize other planets with Ecological Engineering methods, build space hotels with it, or even just sustainable fish cultures down here..."

"It would take some emergency device and a siren if the system breaks down", my wife smiled. "You are not taking me seriously, aren't you?" I asked. "Joe," she said softly "you better don't forget that in that toolkit, creatures like us would be the tools".

* dryfolks - an expression frequently used by Joe Swamp to describe our species (Homo sapiens)