Dr. Seuss and Biology? Really??!

Source: www.cinecon.com

So we all know about " The Cat in the Hat" and "Horton hears a who" & "How the Grinch stole Christmas"  (thanks Hollywood) but Dr. Seuss has written many more like "Green Eggs and Ham" & "One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish". Our task this week was to read "The Lorax" and find out how to link it to biology and use it as a teaching aid. .....Sorry what? .....How?

So a summary: curtain opens on a boy walking down to the Once-ler to find out about the Lorax. Long ago, the Once-ler discovers a rich fertile land with Truffula trees. He sees their fluffy tops and decides to make a thneed (a knitted top which he says everyone will want). When he chops down his first tree a Lorax appears and discourages him from the business as the Lorax "speaks for the trees". Unfortunately for the Lorax, the Thneed business succeeds and the Once-lers' aunts and uncles arrives to help expand the factory. He even mechanises to make harvesting the Truffula trees easier.

Source: http://www.joannemeszoly.com/2009_04_01_archive.html

The Lorax constantly arrives with warnings, and as the environment becomes more and more degraded, the Lorax sends the animals away: the Brown Bar-ba-loots (lack of food), Swomee Swans (air pollution) and Humming Fish (water pollution). Eventually due to growing demand and the company expanding, the last Truffula tree is cut down. The company closes, the Once-lers' aunts and uncles leave, and so does the Lorax, leaving the Once-ler alone in the degraded in the environment. 

The Lorax leaves behind a rubble of rocks with the words "unless" on them. The Once-ler tells the boy (who's listening) that unless he does something about the environment, it won't change. The Once-ler then hands him the last Truffula seed to take care of and possibly restart the forest.

Obviously done with much more finesse and a Dr. Seuss rhyming scheme + pretty pictures.

What was exciting was that this is a piece of work with an origin in Literature that I could successfully apply to Biology.

 I decided that I would use this to introduce the topic of environmental degradation and sustainability, and tie in the real life events that occurred on the Easter Island, where islanders shot themselves in the foot by over-harvesting trees and eventually they couldn't fish for food and then resorted to cannibalism (true story), leaving behind huge stone monoliths.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/20422.php?from=154907

I had 2 approaches for dealing with this topic.

APPROACH 1: Read the Lorax first, then tell the students a basic intro to Easter Island and ask them for suggestions to what they think happened on the island using what they just read in the Lorax. From this delve into the causes of the Easter Island Population crash, explaining sustainable development.

APPROACH 2: Ask the students to give the mistakes made in the story that led to the environments' destruction. I would over-simplify the mistakes and make it seem ridiculously simple and that these mistake couldn't actually happen. Then blind side them with the fact that this has already happen and is happening - DUM DUM DUM!!! 

What I like is that this story is that its message is so simple, and you decide how much detail you want to delve into, that it can be used as a tool from grade 7 up to university. It just shows that virtually anything can be used as a teaching aid, we just have to open our mind a little wider.

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple" - Dr. Seuss