Class 5 Environmental Studies Chapter 10: Earth — Our Shared Home

A voice from far above

Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla became India's first visitor to the International Space Station. From up there he spoke to the Prime Minister of India. He said that the Earth looked like one whole thing. No lines could be seen anywhere on it. We are all part of one family, he said, and this is our one home.

What he could not see

He could not see a single border. Not between states, and not between countries. The lines we draw on maps do not exist on the ground. They live only in our books and in our heads.

The first Indian to look down

Long before him, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian to see our planet from space. Somebody asked him how India looked from up there. His answer has been remembered ever since: the best in the whole world.

Too small for streets

From that height our planet looks tiny. You cannot find your own town, and certainly not your street. What you do see is the broad shape of the land and the wide blue of the sea. That is why we call the Earth the blue planet.

Where exactly do you live?

Try writing your full address. Begin with your name, then the house, the street and the village or town. Then the district, then the state, then the country. Do not stop there. Write one more line at the bottom: planet Earth.

A code for every doorstep

DIGIPIN is a newer way of writing where a place is. It gives every small patch of India its own short digital code of ten characters. A postman, an ambulance or a delivery van can then find a house quickly, in a city or in a village.

Lines we drew ourselves

Borders are useful. They tell us which government looks after a place and where one country's rules end. But they are our own invention. The rock, the soil and the water underneath do not know about them at all.

Nature pays no attention

Air moves wherever the wind carries it. Clouds drift across countries without asking. Rivers run into the sea and the sea reaches many shores. Seeds travel in the wind and on animals. Birds fly over borders without stopping.

One connected ocean

Look carefully at a globe and follow the blue with your finger. You can trace a path from one ocean into the next without ever leaving the water. In that sense the Earth has one great ocean, touching every continent.

People are joined too

We are as connected as the water is. The clothes you wear, the food on your plate and the toys you play with may come from very different places. Music, stories, games and ideas travel just as easily.

Our shared home

So the Earth is one home with many rooms. Nature joins it together. Trade, travel and friendship join it further. Caring for this planet is something everybody has to do, whichever side of a line they live on.

Scenario:

A class reads that Shubhanshu Shukla, the first Indian on the International Space Station, saw no borders below. Ravi says the astronaut must have been too high to see them. His teacher asks the class what a border is made of. The children look at a map and then at a photograph from space. On the map the lines are printed. In the photograph there are rivers, coasts and mountains, and no lines at all. Ravi works it out. The borders were not too small to see. They were never on the ground in the first place, because people drew them on maps.

Analysis:

Ravi assumed the lines were there and invisible. The photograph shows they were never on the land, only on the paper.

Activity:

Compare a map of India with a satellite photograph of it. List what appears on both and what appears on only one.

Title:

Your address, from doorstep to planet

What You Notice:

Every line covers more ground than the one above it. Your house sits inside your town, your town inside your state and your state inside the country. When you reach the last line you notice something else. Everybody in your class, and everybody in every other country, shares that final line with you.

Asked how India looked from space, Rakesh Sharma replied that it was the best in the whole world.

A DIGIPIN code is only ten characters long, yet it points to one small patch of ground.

Your full address — House, street, town, district, state, country, planet — Each line is wider than the one before, and the last one is the Earth.

What crosses a border — Air, water, seeds, birds — Four travellers that have never needed anybody's permission.

A cloud of pink and black

One winter morning a huge flock lands on the fields near Arjun's village. The birds are pink and black, and there are hundreds of them. His grandmother is pleased to see them. "Our winter visitors," she says. They are rosy starlings, and they have flown thousands of kilometres to get here.

Guests who work for their keep

These birds come from the southern part of Russia, from Mongolia and from the lands nearby. Our winter is warm for them. They feed on locusts and grasshoppers, which are the very insects that eat the crops. The farmer gets free help, and the birds get a good meal.

Plants travel as well

Birds are not the only travellers. Plants move too, although somebody usually has to carry them. Seeds ride in a sack, a pocket or a ship. Once they find new soil and a climate they like, they settle down as if they had always been there.

The chilli was a guest

Chilli plants once grew only in South America. Around four or five hundred years ago, travellers from Portugal carried them here. They took to our soil and our weather at once. Today it is hard to imagine our food without them.

Before the chilli came

So how was food made hot before that? With black pepper, which has grown here for a very long time. Pepper and cardamom were so valuable that traders called them black gold and sailed a long way to buy them.

The sweet story going out

Sweetness travelled the other way. Long ago most people used honey and other sweet things. It was in India that people first learned to make jaggery from sugarcane juice. Later the method of turning jaggery into sugar was worked out here too, and it spread through trade and travel.

More that went out from here

Rice, mangoes and bananas also began their journey in India. Today they are eaten in far-off countries by people who have never heard of the fields they came from. Our meals are full of travellers, going both ways.

A flower from Mexico

The marigold is another visitor. It comes from Mexico, where it is used in festivals. It reached India and found a home here. Its bright orange and yellow suited our temples, weddings and Diwali so well that it now seems entirely ours.

Indian cows in Brazil

Animals have travelled too. Centuries ago, Portuguese traders shipped a few Indian cows to Brazil. They were strong, they gave good milk and the weather suited them. More than three-fourths of Brazil's milk now comes from three Indian breeds: Gir, Kankrej and Ongole.

Cargo both ways

Arab traders once brought dates and lemons to our ports. They sailed back with Indian rice and cloth. Paper reached us from China, and before it arrived people wrote on palm leaves and on bark. Almost every journey went in two directions.

Your plate is a map

Look at your dinner tonight. The chilli came from South America and the potato travelled a long way too. The rice may have started here. Every dish holds a small piece of the world's history.

Scenario:

A class learns that rosy starlings fly to India each winter from Russia and Mongolia. Meena asks why a bird would go so far. Her teacher asks what the birds eat here. The answer is locusts and grasshoppers. The class then asks what the fields would be like without them. The children work out that the insects would eat the crops instead. So the birds are fed and the farmers are helped at the same time. Meena sees that the journey is not strange once both ends are counted. The birds come for food, and the fields gain from their coming.

Analysis:

The journey looks extravagant until both ends are counted. The birds get a winter's food and the fields lose a season's locusts.

Activity:

Find one bird that visits your area in winter. Write where it comes from and what it eats while it is here.

Title:

Where did my dinner come from?

What You Notice:

Even a simple meal turns out to be a mixture. Some items have grown near your home for a very long time. Others crossed an ocean to reach your kitchen. The lines you draw on the map will run to several different countries from one small plate.

Indian cow breeds in Brazil are honoured on that country's stamps and coins.

Traders called Indian pepper and cardamom black gold and sailed a long way to buy them.

Which way did it travel? — Chilli in, sugar out — Chilli came to India; the way of making sugar went out from India.

Indian cows in Brazil — Gir, Kankrej, Ongole — Three Indian breeds that now give most of Brazil's milk.

The park at dawn

It is the twenty-first of June. Arjun walks past the park at six in the morning and stops. Mats are spread out in rows. Old people, young people and children are stretching together. His teacher waves at him from the front row. "Come on," she calls. "The whole world is doing this today."

A very old practice

What they are doing is yoga. People in India have practised it for more than three thousand years. It was meant to keep the body healthy and the mind calm. It was also a way of living in peace with oneself and with nature around us.

How it went out into the world

Yoga did not stay here. Travellers, scholars and teachers carried it with them. Bit by bit, people in other countries began to learn it too. Today it is practised in almost every country on the Earth.

A day for everybody

In the year 2014, the United Nations made the twenty-first of June the International Day of Yoga. On that morning, millions of people in many countries stretch and breathe together. That is why Arjun's park is full so early.

Not our only gift

India has shared other things too. The game of chess began here, and so did snakes and ladders. Ayurveda, one of the oldest ways of treating illness, was worked out here more than three thousand years ago. These ideas are now used far away from where they began.

Ideas are the best travellers

An idea is an unusual sort of gift. If you give away a mango, you no longer have it. If you teach somebody a game or a way of sitting quietly, you still have it yourself. That is why ideas spread so far and so fast.

The web of life

Put all the stories together and a pattern appears. A bird crosses continents. A seed grows in new soil. A practice like yoga reaches every corner of the Earth. People, animals, plants and ideas move about, mingle and grow side by side. The Earth is a living web.

One family

Our country has an old saying for this idea: Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. It means that the world is one family. It is not only a pretty phrase. If the world is a family, then a stranger far away is somebody you are related to.

Who else is in the family

And it is not only people. Animals, trees and rivers belong to this family too, and so do the air and the sky. We live together and we depend on one another. The same air and the same water go round to all of us.

The only home we know

The Earth is special. No other planet we know of carries life. For thousands of years it has carried people, animals and plants. It is not just a place we live in. It is a gift we have to look after.

Caring is not a favour

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has a logo that shows nature and human life in balance. That is the whole idea. Caring for the Earth is also a way of caring for one another.

Scenario:

On the twenty-first of June, Arjun's school holds a yoga morning on the playground. Four sections of Class 5 take part. Each section has 32 children. Twelve teachers join them at the back. The physical training teacher lays the mats out in rows of 10. Before they begin, the principal tells the school where the practice comes from. It began in India more than three thousand years ago. The United Nations chose this date in 2014. That way people everywhere could take part together. After the session the children read out messages from a partner school abroad. The same thing had happened there that morning.

Analysis:

One school morning links an old Indian practice, a worldwide day, and a real counting problem about rows and mats.

Activity:

Find out one practice, game or food that came to your town from somewhere else. Ask an elder when it arrived and draw its journey on a map.

Title:

A week of caring for the Earth

Safety:

Ask an adult before you handle anything hot, sharp or heavy while doing your chosen habits.

What You Notice:

The mug fills up faster than you expect, and that is only one brushing. By the end of the week the green squares make the habit look easy. If every child in your class did the same, the saving would be far bigger than one chart can show.

Chess, and snakes and ladders as well, began as games played in India.

Ayurveda, one of the oldest ways of treating illness, was worked out here over three thousand years ago.

Gifts that went out from India — Yoga, Ayurveda, chess — Three Indian ideas that are now used all over the world.

Why an idea spreads — Give it away and still keep it — A mango is gone once you share it, but a taught idea stays with you.