They’re teaching kids to code these days, which is good—the next technology visionary could come from their generation so it makes sense to start them early.  By the time they hit fifteen or even earlier, these brave, enterprising kids just might come up with something brilliant and life-changing for our world.  

You know what else makes sense?  Teaching green building to kids too.

Ask random people on the street what their thoughts are regarding green building, and many would probably have no idea what it is.  At best, you might get an answer along the lines of “environment-friendly buildings”, which is essentially correct of course.  But beyond that basic utopian description, few people have a solid idea of what green building is—the frameworks and methodology involved, the necessary criteria, etcetera.

And that’s a sad thing.  The green building movement has been around for decades, but for all its growth and progress, it’s still largely unknown to the public.  Sure, we can educate people, hold seminars and talks, write optimistic op-eds like this—anything to get the message out there.

Green Building Lessons

But wouldn’t it be nicer to start at the roots?—at the school level to influence our children’s education.  By including green building in the school curriculum, kids no doubt will be exposed to the concept of green building, not just its very basic meaning but all its ins and outs.  They’ll learn and value once-esoteric concepts such as sustainability, high-performance buildings, carbon footprint, proper siting, water- and energy-efficiency, materials reuse and recycle, xeriscaping, composting, and many more.  And they’ll learn how each one integrates into a perfect whole to transform a true green building.

Don’t worry, kids can handle all these new concepts (these days they can handle almost anything the world throws at them).  But of course, lessons are better absorbed by young minds if they’re delivered in a fun and worthwhile way—kids are smart, but remember they have short attention spans too. 

Putting the Fun in Green Building

Green Building as a fun venture?  Well, it’s possible.  Just ask this class which used LEGOs to introduce green building to youngsters.  Why hadn’t anyone thought of that before?—of course, LEGO bricks make the perfect demo tools for green building.  The class even used LEED-inspired scorecards to gauge the efficiency of their masterpiece prototypes.       

Ultimately, what we’re aiming for here is for kids to have a better awareness of the built environment.  The next time they look at a building, they won’t just marvel at how elegant and sleek and ultramodern it is.  Instead, they’ll appreciate the invisible features that make it operate efficiently.  There are lessons in art appreciation, so why not green building appreciation as well?  Hopefully, that appreciation will translate into a sense of responsibility as they grow up and start to build their own homes.

Kids have it good these days.  They’re entitled to so many things which our generation could only have dreamed of when we were at their age, especially the vast amount of information that lie under their fingertips.  With mandatory lessons in technology and environment hand in hand, they get the best of both worlds—a way to progress tempered by respect and responsibility to the environment.