Dam Hetch Hetchy! by John Muir

Transcription

1 Dam Hetch Hetchy! by John Muir MS / Science Beauty, Conservation vs. Preservation, Contingency Help participants define the difference between Conservation vs. Preservation, via web information, dictionary, or other resources. Then ask participants to go to one of two sides of the room: Conservationist on one side, Preservationist on the other. Once there, take 30 seconds to explain to a partner why you are not on the other side of the room. Ask several students to share out from each group. Distribute the text and ask participants to anticipate what they expect this reading to be like. Read the text aloud together. Number the paragraphs 1-6, noting that paragraph 3 is broken into two parts. The making starts paragraph 3A; Nevertheless starts paragraph 3B. 1

2 John Muir was a Scottish-American Preservationist, The Progressive Era s most controversial environmental issue was the struggle over federal government approval for building the Hetch Hetchy dam in a remote corner of federallyowned land in California s Yosemite National Park. The city of San Francisco, rebuilding after the devastating 1906 earthquake, believed the dam was necessary to meet its burgeoning needs for reliable supplies of water and electricity. At Congressional hearings on Hetch Hetchy held in 1913, supporters of the plan like Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief Forester of the United States and a noted environmentalist and conservationist, argued that conservation of natural resources was best achieved through management of the wilderness. Preservationist and Sierra Club founder John Muir did not testify before Congress, but he argued against the Hetch Hetchy plan in this excerpt from his 1912 book, The Yosemite. In the end Congress chose management over aesthetics, voting (with 29 abstentions) to allow the Hetch Hetchy dam on federal land. (The facilitator will need to decide when best to share the fact that Muir was a preservationist and that the dam was built. It may be best saved for Post-Seminar.) (Information retrieved March 2015 from: Provide (or mine participants for) definitions for Context/Rare Words, which include: sublime, gay flowery meadow, reservoir, commercial scheme, manifest, smug-smiling philanthropy, despoiled, righteous, geranium, shampiously, proponents, devised, ravaging commercialism, holier. Additionally, these words represent ideas essential to the text and for academic dialogue: Conservation, Preservation (Post directions.) Ask that participants read the text a second time on their own and underline/highlight what they consider to be the author s most significant in each paragraph (two for paragraph 3). Students should note 3 areas of most puzzlement with a? and 3 areas of strongest agreement with a!. 2

3 What is a value found within the text? (round-robin response) (Listen closely as participants share: Facilitator to record them.) Then Listen to the list we have generated (read list from notes or posted for whole group). Where is an idea or value we heard that was not initially yours in found within the text? (spontaneous discussion) How is this similar to and/or different from other scientific text you have read? What content makes this an appropriate text for science class? What part of the text causes puzzlement? What part is most vivid? What does Muir show the reader that might be otherwise missed? Is there a point or consideration that Muir leaves out? Why do you think it is left out? Should it be? Was Muir was a Preservationist or a Conservationist? Based on the text, how do you know? 3

4 If the O Shaughnessy Dam had not been built, what might Hetch Hetchy Valley be like today? The facilitator will anchor the transition to writing by revisiting the Launch Activity, and asking students to revisit where in the text they see Muir s preservationist stance as most prominent. After reading and discussing Dam Hetch Hetchy!, write an opinion column for an imaginary science website magazine in which you evaluate both approaches to environmental concerns Conservation vs. Preservation. Support your own position on which approach you favor most at this time (in part) by referencing the text specifically. Consider your audience to be science teachers interested in a middle school student s understanding and point of view on Conservation vs. Preservation. (Argumentation/Comparison) (LDC Task#: 4 ) 4

5 As a class, construct a T-chart, with ideas and descriptions about Conservationists approach on one side and Preservationists approach on the other side (regarding caring for and maintaining the environment). Keep this in a visible place for participants. Allow a few minutes for all to revisit the text, draft an outline for their writing, and refine their thinking. Have participants use an organizational template as needed. Challenge all to draft their essays by writing the paragraphs defined by their outlines. Encourage a text reference for examples as well as non-examples of the thinking of both Conservationists and Preservationists. Have participants work in pairs to read their first drafts aloud to each other with emphasis on reader as creator and editor. The reader should make a special note to signify to the listener the definition for each point of view as well as which side they favor most at this point in time. The listener says back one point heard clearly, how it is supported by the text (or used as a non-example), and asks one question for clarification. Roles are then switched. Give time for full revisions resulting in a second draft. Once the second draft is complete, have participants work in groups of three-four and this time take turns reading each other s second drafts slowly and silently, marking spelling or grammar errors they find, with a limit of 5-per page. (Have dictionaries and grammar handbooks available for reference.) Take this opportunity to clarify/reteach any specific grammar strategies you have identified your students needing. Give time for full revisions and editing, resulting in a third and final draft. Publish (either electronically or on paper) the final copies of the resulting arguments in a collection to be shared via the class web site and as students contemplating scientific questions of the 21 st century. These can be seen and as exemplary personal argumentative essays for future students. 5

6 Kelly Foster (Thank you to Suhrita Ganguly) National Paideia Center 6

7 Dam Hetch Hetchy! by John Muir Hetch Hetchy Valley, far from being a plain, common, rock-bound meadow, as many who have not seen it seem to suppose, is a grand landscape garden, one of Nature s rarest and most precious mountain temples. As in Yosemite, the sublime rocks of its walls seem to glow with life, whether leaning back in repose or standing erect in thoughtful attitudes, giving welcome to storms and calms alike, their brows in the sky, their feet set in the groves and gay flowery meadows, while birds, bees, and butterflies help the river and waterfalls to stir all the air into music things frail and fleeting and types of permanence meeting here and blending, just as they do in Yosemite, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her. Sad to say, this most precious and sublime feature of the Yosemite National Park, one of the greatest of all our natural resources for the uplifting joy and peace and health of the people, is in danger of being dammed and made into a reservoir to help supply San Francisco with water and light, thus flooding it from wall to wall and burying its gardens and groves one or two hundred feet deep. This grossly destructive commercial scheme has long been planned and urged (though water as pure and abundant can be got from sources outside of the people s park, in a dozen different places), because of the comparative cheapness of the dam and of the territory which it is sought to divert from the great uses to which it was dedicated in the Act of 1890 establishing the Yosemite National Park. The making of gardens and parks goes on with civilization all over the world, and they increase both in size and number as their value is recognized. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is made manifest in the little window-sill gardens of the poor, though perhaps only a geranium slip in a broken cup, as well as in the carefully tended rose and lily gardens of the rich, the thousands of spacious city parks and botanical gardens, and in our magnificent National parks the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc. Nature s sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world. [continued paragraph] Nevertheless, like anything else worthwhile, from the very beginning, however well guarded, they have always been subject to attack by despoiling gain-seekers and mischief-makers of every degree from Satan to Senators, eagerly trying to make everything immediately and selfishly commercial, with schemes disguised in smugsmiling philanthropy, industriously, shampiously crying, Conservation, conservation, panutilization, that man and beast may be fed and the dear Nation made great. Thus long ago a few enterprising merchants utilized the Jerusalem temple as a place of business instead of a place of prayer, changing money, buying and selling cattle and sheep and doves; and earlier still; the first forest reservation, including only one tree, was likewise despoiled. Ever since the establishment of the Yosemite National Park, strife has been going on around its borders and I suppose this will go on as part of the 7

8 universal battle between right and wrong, however much its boundaries may be shorn, or its wild beauty destroyed.... That anyone would try to destroy [Hetch Hetchy Valley] seems; incredible; but sad experience shows that there are people good enough and bad enough for anything. The proponents of the dam scheme bring forward a lot of bad arguments to prove that the only righteous thing to do with the people s parks is to destroy them bit by bit as they are able. Their arguments are curiously like those of the devil, devised for the destruction of the first garden.... These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man. (Retrieved March 2015 from: 8