the activities
And the Moral Is... (Water Fables) Description: Students will study fables and parables. Each student will then write and present for the class their own original fable or parable dealing with water scarcity. Go directly to:
Students will identify the elements of a fable and a parable. Students will write original fables or parables that deal with water scarcity. Fables and parables have long been used to point out human foibles and foolishness, and to provide wisdom to the observers of those follies. World water usage provides many cases that could use a little wisdom. In the video Troubled Waters, Dr. James Leutze points out, “We take water for granted. We don’t give it a second thought unless something drastic happens like a drought. Only then do we realize how crucial water is to our lives,” The amount of water in the world is finite. But we use it as though we had an endless supply. We stand at the sink brushing our teeth while gallons of water run down the drain unused. We dump pesticides on the ground without realizing that those pesticides will eventually find their way into the water supply, poisoning our water as well as the pests. When the water in the river or lake is low, we still pump water from aquifers, draining repositories that have held quality water for thousands of years, and draining them fast. John Morris, Director of the North Carolina Division of Water Resources, approaches a parable when he points out in "Troubled Waters," “We’ve taken out more water than [the aquifer] can recharge and so it’s like having a big bank account and a small income, one day your banker calls and says, ’I’m sorry, son, but you’re going to be broke next week.’ Now the solution to that is that we have to gradually reduce the amount of water we’re withdrawing from those aquifers.” Ryan Boyles, Associate State Climatologist, State Climate Office of North Carolina, has pointed out a human foible when it comes to water management. “We tend to have a shortsighted view of the availability of water," he says. "Unlike flooding, which comes quickly and goes quickly, drought sneaks up on you very slowly and leaves slowly... People say: ‘Oh, we’re never going to actually run out of water. We’ll get rain eventually’. The problem is eventually may be too long.” Ryan Boyles Interview (Microsoft Word document) Billy Ray Hall, President, North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center, Inc. (Rural Center), compares our attitudes toward conservation to another important resource. “Most people thought electricity was plentiful, no problem everything is fine. Fran came through and knocked down literally thousands of electric service. Electricity is a critical thing. We have to have it… If you get up tomorrow morning and don’t use any water, you won’t have to be talked to for very long about let’s find a way to provide water.” Billy Ray Hall Interview (Microsoft Word document) Self focus is another human trait that is exemplified by our uses of water. Those who live upstream get to the water first. What they do to it, and how much of it they use, affects not just themselves, but also everyone downstream who uses water from the same source. "The people at the top of the mountain, how concerned are they about the quality of water that they release, eventually, to the people [downstream]?" asks Allan Horton, Vice Chairman of the Deep River Coalition. "I would say that they haven’t been concerned about it to the degree they need to be, because it’s out of their neighborhood…they’re just dumping it, downriver. If they had somebody dumping upriver from them, they’d be a little more concerned about it." The present and future consequences of our water habits are filled with morals to teach and to live by. A good fable or parable, due to its simplicity, clarity, and reading appeal, is a perfect vehicle for pointing out these morals. In this lesson students will write fables and parables that point out the unwise ways that humans use water, with morals to teach them the error of their ways. 1. View the video Troubled Waters with the students. Discuss the issues of water scarcity. Include in the discussions both causes (drought, waste, aquifer depletion, pollution, climate) and effects (disease, death, crop loss, water wars, upstream/downstream disputes) of water scarcity. Discuss with students where their water comes from (hydrological cycle, inter-basin transfer, aquifers, natural bodies of water, man-made reservoirs) and where it goes (aquifers, rivers, treatment plants, estuaries). Discuss how different communities in different situations deal with water scarcity (community cooperation, conservation, inter-basin transfer, desalinization, pricing, war). Lead the students to express their feelings about how the world now deals with water and the potential problems if the behavior continues. From this discussion, the students should derive many ideas for morals to write their fables about. 2. Read some fables with students, such as those by Aesop and LaFontaine, or Eastern fables and parables, such as the Parable of the Stonecutter. Depending on the grade level and amount of time one wants to spend, the teacher may choose to read longer works such as:
George Orwell, Animal Farm Paul Coelho, The Alchemist
Elie Viesel's Fable of the Just Man Mark Twain's Fable of the Mirror Richard Wilbur's A Fable 3. Discuss the fables with the class, attempting to get the class to induce the elements of a fable: a. It can be a short story or a poem. b. It usually has animals for characters. c. It is didactic, attempting to teach a lesson. d. It uses personification to express abstract ideas in human terms. e. It has a moral at the end, either stated or implied. 4. Once the students understand the structure and purpose of fables and parables, assign them the task of writing one or more fables or parables to express important lessons that will make people understand the foolishness of wasting water. Present these steps to aid them in planning their fable: A. From your reading, infer a moral that people should understand about their attitudes toward water. Here are some examples for morals that can be inferred from passages about water usage.
Here are some quotes by famous authors that could be used as morals for water fables:
“When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” Benjamin Franklin “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” W. H. Auden “Trickling water, if not stopped, will become a mighty river.” Chinese proverb “Beside a stream, don’t waste water; even in a forest, don’t waste fire wood.” Chinese proverb The link below will take you to a diagram that in itself may suggest a moral: B. Plan what characters they think will best tell their fable. C. Plan a setting for the story, the complication (conflict), and the resolution. D. Write the story, putting the moral at the end.
2. Read some of Aesop's Fables. Choose one you think might illustrate human's attitude toward water consumption and retell it in that perspective. You may change the moral at the end if you think it will help. The sites below have some examples of rewritten fables: Animated Fables http://www.umass.edu/aesop/contents.html Rewriting a fable http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/rewritea01.htm Glossary of Literary Terms Related Lesson Plans on the Web: Ask Eric http://askeric.org/cgi-bin/printlessons.cgi/Virtual/Lessons/Interdisciplinary/INT0020.html New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/19981002friday.html?searchpv=learning_lessons#ic)
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