“During nearly all the history of our species man has lived in association with large, often terrifying, but always exciting animals. Models of the survivors, toy elephants, giraffes and pandas, are an integral part of contemporary childhood. If all these animals became extinct, as is quite possible, are we sure that some irreparable harm to our psychological development would not be done?” ~ G. E. Hutchinson,
quoted p.275 Paul Shepard ‘On Animal Friends’ pp.275-300 in Eds. Stephen R Kellert and Edward O Wilson (1993) The Biophilia Hypothesis. Shearwater Books. Washington, DC; Covelo, California
On a similar tangent, Aaron Katcher and Gregory Wilkins observe that “Children raised on television are exposed to vast amounts of information but fail to learn very much about their immediate environment. Too much is learned from a small two-dimensional representation of global events and too little from direct exploration of their own place in the world.” (p.192)
Aaron Katcher and Gregory Wilkins ‘Dialogue with Animals: Its Nature and Culture’ pp. 173-197 (?) in Eds. Stephen R Kellert and Edward O Wilson (1993) The Biophilia Hypothesis. Shearwater Books. Washington, DC; Covelo, California
LiteracyNZ 