Students and faculty looking for healthy lifestyle changes may find them in discussion. Healthy Planet-Healthy Children is a new seven-week, self-guided discussion course offered by University Ministry.
According to Gerry Fischer, assistant director of University Ministry, the self-guided course will cover the effects of the consumer culture and the media on children. The course is for all faculty, staff and students. The course is from the Northwest Earth Institute, an organization that created the Voluntary Simplicity discussion course used at Marquette.
"Children are targeted by advertisers and are less connected to daily life," Fischer said. "This discussion course will be about helping children to make better lifestyle choices."
Sometimes children do not always understand that what they see on television is not always as it seems in reality, Fischer said.
The seven topics covered in Healthy Planet-Healthy Children, a program developed by Northwest Earth Institute, are cultural pressures, family rituals and celebration, advertising, food and health, time and creativity, technology and media and exploring nature.
According to Deb McNamara, the national outreach coordinator of Northwest Earth Institute, the topics focus on children and consumer culture. Northwest Earth Institute is an environmental nonprofit group based in Portland, Ore. and was started in 1993. The non-profit develops discussion courses that help people realize their values, attitudes and actions through discussion.
"For example the cultural pressures discussion focuses on how young people are pressured to dress in a certain way, eat certain foods and act in certain ways favorable to their peers," McNamara said.
The discussions are accompanied with a book that is a compilation of articles on the topic.
"Parents struggle with raising kids in the modern world and have a tough time explaining to children that what is best for everyone else may not be best for them," Fischer said.
According to McNamara, Healthy Children-Healthy Planet is one of six discussion courses that focus on simplicity.
"The core value of our organization is living simply," she said. "We promote simplicity and how people can avoid unhealthy patterns of consumption."
The institute is compiling a seventh discussion course about global warming coming out in spring of 2007, McNamara said.
According to McNamara, through discussion courses, the organization hopes to motivate individuals to examine and transform personal values and habits.
"We do not want there to be a teacher in these discussion courses," she said. "We want participants to reflect on lifestyle choices, discuss issues and arrive on their own conclusions."
University Ministry is holding this as a pilot program, Fischer said. ?Healthy Children-Healthy Planet will take place for seven Tuesdays beginning Sept. 19 from noon-1 p.m. at the Alumni Memorial Union, room 223. People interested can sign up in University Ministry, AMU 236.