Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island

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Childrens Ethics Program
-- Posted Feb 02 2010
Darwin Day is coming! Perhaps, by this writing, it will already be here….

People have asked me, “Why Darwin Day? Why not celebrate Albert Einstein Day?” I agree that Albert is a worthy person to celebrate, particularly because he actually was aware of Ethical Culture and at the 75th birthday celebration of the Ethical Culture movement, he made a speech and part of it said that “The frightful dilemma of the political world situation has much to do with this sin of omission on the part of our civilization. Without "ethical culture," there is no salvation for humanity.” I’m not joking; this quote is on the AEU website; www.aeu.org

Darwin Day and the idea of celebrating it was not unique to me, in fact I got this idea because many of our “sister” Ethical Culture societies celebrate Darwin Day. So why should we celebrate Darwin? As I read about Darwin, two things struck me. The first was that Darwin was a theist and as he learned more and more about the animal kingdom, he fell into a very deep depression because he realized that the stories told by the Bible could not possibly be true. He took 20 years to publish his famous book, because he was afraid that it would destroy theism and religious belief. However, he chose to publish the book anyway; he chose “deed” over “creed” and did the right thing. I think Darwin was an Ethical Humanist and he didn’t even know it.

This year, our Darwin Day theme will mirror the social action theme for this year; ecology and helping the environment. The main platform presentation will be called, “Seashore Safari”, the beach will be brought into our Ethical Society as Tracy Marcus from the Cornell Cooperative Extension presents a hands-on introduction to local marine life—sea stars, shellfish, hermit crabs, snails and …the infamous horseshoe crab. Tracy has demonstrated this program for adults and children and she told me it was one of the most popular programs. I know that the entire community will enjoy this interesting and informative presentation.

Tracy Marcus has a master’s degree in Earth Science Education and is a New York State Certified Earth Science and Biology Secondary teacher. She had worked for 13 years in a variety of school districts and has been with the New York State Parks, Western Suffolk Boces and Cornell Cooperative Extension for the past 9 years.

The children will once again create science projects reflecting our interest in the environmental impact of pollution. All the children’s projects will be displayed on the stage and each child will have the opportunity to proudly show their projects to the community at large. Any project can be related to the topic of how it impacts the Earth environmentally. All of our actions and decisions have some effect on the environment. Our resident biologist, Dr. Joan Petersen will be on hand to provide her exciting “hands on” science demonstrations that were enjoyed by young and old. I will reprise my “Survival of the Fittest” Activity. The YES group will be on hand to help out with fun activities like the Graffiti wall.

Our children have also decided to begin a recycling program at the Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island. We will unveil their great idea at our Darwin Day event.

We need more adult volunteers to help out. In particular, we need a few adults to help out with serving lunch, sitting at the Welcome Table, taking down names addresses and phone numbers of visitors, and selling our extensive book collection. We also have extra Teen Arts Festival T-shirts left over from last year that we can sell. Please speak to Joan Petersen, Kori Schroeder or me if you are available and can help us out.

It is important that everyone from our community come out and become a part of this enjoyable and joyous event! It shows how much you love our society and care about our children and their efforts in this endeavor.

As usual, our children’s program could not be run without the help of our participating parents, and I thank everyone for their help, input and commitment to our children. I am so grateful for your energy, spirit and commitment to the success of our Sunday morning program.

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