English Teacher Angel Peng
In 1931, Thomas Edison, the most innovative tycoon of all time, told his friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone: “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” Back in the early 1900s, Thomas Edison and his fellow scientists had already foreseen that fossil fuels wouldn’t last forever. Just as Thomas Edison predicted, one of the most used energy sources in the world, oil, has met its dead end several times in history since the 1970s (Rogers, 2007).
As global citizens, students in KCIS touched down on the topic through a reading titled “Gold Dreams”. In this reading, our students learned the famous gold rush era in the 1800s and understood the rise and fall of the golden era. Therefore, students realized that energy resources, such as gold, have a limit of using it, and the urge of conservation of such energy resources is required.
Our grade 5 students started to wonder and brainstorm what is the most important energy resource in our world right now. This energy resource is irreplaceable, and almost everything in this world right now has something to do with it. Can you guess it already? Yes! It’s the one and only—oil! Our students realized almost everything is made from oil in our everyday life during the “PLAN” stage. From the computers we use for online learning to the tiny little straw we use to drink. People use oil products from the moment they wake up till they fall asleep. It seems like people cannot live without oil, and oil seems like the only direction towards a convenient life.
Oil takes such an important role in our life, but does it always do good to people’s lives? This makes our students wonder. Thus, our students headed to the “RESEARCH” stage and looked it up on the research data the school library provided to find out the pros and cons of oil. Our students then analyzed the pros and cons of oil according to their research and life experiences during the “CREATE” stage. In the end, grade 5 students realized that although oil helps make people’s lives more convenient, it also brings tremendous air pollution and damages to the world we are living in right now. Our students became worried that it seems impossible for people to live without oil until humans find a better energy resource.
According to the British Petroleum’s 2019 Statistical Review of World Energy, it would take only about 48 years — meaning some time in 2067 — to exhaust those reserves (Learn, 2021). Finally, our grade 5 students came to realize that every cloud has a silver lining. Oil pollutes the environment we live in, but it also makes our life easier. Meanwhile, many scientists are thriving to work on finding a way to replace oil to reduce the amount of usage and keep our environment more eco-friendly. Last but not the least, our grade 5 students learned the importance of oil conservation and everything has its own time and season. As long as humans continue to raise awareness of not abusing the convenience that oil brings us, humans will continue to live in a better and advanced place.