SHAMEFUL

For several years, and perhaps even longer, my children's ex-primary school (and now the one where my grandchildren go), has had various projects to teach children respect for nature, beautifying the environment, and similar. Most of these have failed miserably.

In the above photo you can see that pine trees were planted before the summer holiday, with the intention that each class would care for, i.e. water during the holidays and after. 

The failure of this particular project broke my heart for several reasons:  No teacher/school authority/environmental adviser seems to have paid any attention to the fact that sandy dry soil (and this part of New Belgrade was built  on sand and marsh (buildings still standing since the early Sixties) is NOT where pine trees grow in nature. Just as bad, they were planted in full sun, and we know how hot and dry this summer was. Also, it is not enough to ask children to faithfully water the trees; someone needs to supervise this project, especially since these were planted not long before the summer holiday when people go on vacation. 

Every day I pass by the schoolyard on my dog walks. Yesterday (and school begins today) I wrote a  letter to the director of the school summing up my thoughts and reprimanding the school for apparently 'just fulfilling a duty' and not following up.

I will give them two weeks to answer, and then a modified version goes to the public newspaper. I don't expect miracles, but at least I know I have in some small way made the authorities aware of the problem. I also plan  on sending by mail a letter to the school...someone may have just pressed 'delete'. And yes, they could toss the paper letter too.