David Suzuki Hidden Lessons Summary

Mankind has existed for thousands of years and we have evolved to become better than past generations… or did we? We learned to evolve technologically to fight against each another. We learned to evolve intellectually to vote Donald Trump as the US president of 2016. We learn all these things that cause our own destruction, yet we don’t learn to care for the environment around us and respect it. In “Hidden Lessons” by David Suzuki, he explains how children are misguided by the negative views of nature of many people and how children are influenced to fear nature rather than embrace it. While I am not an environmental activist, I strongly agree with David Suzuki’s inner meaning of not just teaching “children to love and respect other life forms”

(Suzuki 129), but to also not misguide them and change their point of view simply to match ours.
Before I began to read this essay, I knew David Suzuki was a strong and passionate environmental activist, and so I made a prediction that this essay was going to be about nature.

As I read the essay, I started to realize that while David Suzuki based this essay on nature and the wildlife, the deeper meaning within is not actually just about nature; instead, it is about parents influencing kids to think a certain way rather than letting them experience it firsthand and unbiased, and I believe that as society is changing, more people are focusing on fitting into the norm rather than trying things out on their own and having their own opinions. I feel upset that society is changing in the wrong way, and sometimes I wonder if parents are taking away their children’s curiosity of the world around them and manipulating their views on aspects of

society.
Let’s take David Suzuki’s daughter as an example.

In the essay, David Suzuki explains how her daughter’s friends were afraid when she “brings home new friends” (128), which are salamanders. While I believe salamanders are really cool, I actually never got to see one (which upsets me), but instead, I used to play with caterpillars. As a young student back in North Agincourt, I loved to go to the leaves during springtime and get a caterpillar on my hand. I used to love the cute cuddly animals walking on my hand, yet when I show them to my friends, they would not get scared, but rather disgusted and said things such as “Eww. Why is that crawling on your hand?” While a caterpillar is not a salamander, the concept was similar. Kids were adapted to be disgusted by “creepy crawlers” and fear them, and part of the blame goes to parents. While some parents don’t fear these sorts of animals, they don’t tell their kids not to fear nor accept them, and so when the kids see these animals, they fear what they don’t understand. In my opinion, it is important to get the kids to interact with these animals and not be afraid of them. As David Suzuki states, parents need to understand that by not letting our kids understand and engage in their curiosity unbiased, they are harming them with “the unspoken, negative lessons [they] are conveying to [their] children” (Suzuki

128).
A final example in this essay I want to talk about is how parents are killing us rather than helping us. In the essay, David Suzuki explains how children are fascinated by tiny creatures and their curiosity gets the better of them; however, parents “condition them out of it” (128), killing their curiosity and their potential to truly understand the world around them. I am lucky to have wonderful parents who understand this and let me try things out on my own to interact fully the world around me and allowing me to have my own personal views unbiased from what my parents think. While I enjoy this freedom, other people think of this as weird. Back in Macklin Public School, I used to get mocked and teased for having different views compared to the other students. It was up until the point in Grade 4 that I decided to switch out and go to North Agincourt to try out the French Extended Program, which is a decision I do not regret at all. All in all, what I am trying to achieve in saying is that people nowadays are not accepting of others, whether it is racism to discrimination to just having different views. Parents have conditioned kids to the point where they only learn to look a certain way rather than having multiple viewpoints, and in my opinion, this is just upsetting.
Even though this essay brought back some memories I do not want to remember, I believe that this issue is thought-provoking and begs the question of why social conditioning is harming us rather than helping us. Through reading this essay, I continually debate whether mankind is changing for the worse rather than for the better; however, I believe this can change through one generation at a time. I believe that we can learn to adapt and correct the mistakes which lead up to this issue and I believe that if more and more people change their style of teaching their kids to engage in society without “mind controlling them”, people may learn to have different opinions and perhaps maybe through that, we can learn to work together as one being rather than separate races and culture and views.
In conclusion, David Suzuki manages to use his passion to address an issue that is deeply concerning, but not taken into consideration by many people around the world. The fact that we “live in a world conceived, shaped and dominated by people” (Suzuki 127), yet unable to think for ourselves and have different opinions contradicts the definition of freedom and self-expression. As stated earlier, I strongly believe and agree with David Suzuki in how kids need to learn and understand for themselves rather than being persuaded and controlled to think like their parents and to think like the norm, they should think on their own and have their own opinions on things.