666 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



of meaning. Beauty can be experienced and we are persuaded that 

 its appreciation and conservation can be taught and can be learned. 



The way children live and the way they learn, at home, church, 

 school, through TV, books, newspapers, magazines, will influence 

 how they will live and what they will do. Put in other words, 

 what is not in the mind cannot be in attitudes, values and acts; 

 that is, in behavior. It is too much to expect of children who do 

 not have a healing, that is, a sanative environment full of natural 

 beauty, in early youth, to guarantee an environment of natural 

 beauty for others; in children, after all, are the true origins of pub- 

 lic policy and practice. Amongst these children are our future 

 leaders in all walks of life, men and women who will live for ideas, 

 as well as those who will live off them, that is, apply them to 

 practice. 



In a correlative way, one may ask whether a society which does 

 not develop a sanative environment for all children can require 

 of all children, in whatever area they commit themselves, com- 

 passion and competence, in return for squalor. Clearly, early edu- 

 cation as well as adult education in all manner and form is 

 central to securing and maintaining natural beauty in the environ- 

 ments of people, their homes, their buildings, their natural areas, 

 their parks. Natural areas, play areas, and parks are often the 

 only guarantees of the precious but harmless lawlessness that chil- 

 dren require for development, but that is now often denied them. 



The curriculum of the school is, after all, all the community 

 does through the school to safeguard not only the child's future 

 in the world but, just as importantly, the environment in which 

 future children will grow. Beauty must be implicit and explicit in 

 the architecture flowing from man and the architecture flowing from 

 nature. The community provides schools with classrooms, libraries, 

 laboratories, and gymnasiums; the community must also provide 

 cities built with an eye for beauty as well as natural areas with their 

 natural beauty and so, too, with its churches, synagogues, museums, 

 theaters, galleries, all its buildings and playgrounds. 



Just as an ever smaller world needs larger minds to encompass 

 it, so a world in which areas of natural beauty are shrinking needs 

 a greater sensitivity and a larger purpose to conserve and enhance 

 it in natural beauty so that it is fit for all living things and for 

 all who will live. We cannot make low compromises with destinies 

 of children. 



