Optional Silent Spring Reading Extension and Study Guide Goal: Students will examine the seminal work by Rachel Carson which first brought pesticides and the wide-spread use of chemicals in the environment to the public s attention. Objectives: Students will Read selected chapters of Silent Spring for both scientific content and literary analysis. Respond to prompts that will connect the science narrative and their understanding of literature. Identify the main idea(s), the author s argument, and theme of the chosen chapters. Materials (for a class of 32): 32 copies of Silent Spring Rachel Carson Biography 32 copies of Silent Spring Rachel Carson Biography Student Sheet 32 copies of Silent Spring Chapter 1 A Fable for Tomorrow Student Sheet 32 copies of Silent Spring Chapter 3 Elixirs of Death Student Sheet 32 copies of Silent Spring Chapter 9 Rivers of Death Student Sheet 32 copies of Silent Spring Chapter 12 The Human Price Student Sheet Classroom set of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson Time Required: Five 45 60 minute class periods or five homework assignments Standards Met: S8, LA1, LA2, LA3, LA6 Green Chemistry Principles Addressed: 1 12 Procedure: IN CLASS Explain to students that as background information for their Green Chemistry unit they will be reading excerpts from a book called Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Explain that Rachel Carson was a writer and biologist who touched off an international controversy about the environmental effects of pesticides with her 1962 book, Silent Spring. The book became a best-seller and the foundation of modern ecological awareness. Hand out the Silent Spring Rachel Carson Biography. Hand out the Silent Spring Rachel Carson Biography Student Sheet. Ask students to read the sheet and answer the questions. Continue each class period or each night with the reading assignment and worksheet questions. End the unit with a class discussion about the readings using the Silent Spring Class Discussion Questions.
Assessment: Completion of all five Student Sheets and participation in class discussion
Rachel Carson Biography Sheet Rachel Louise Carson Born: May 27, 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania Died: April 14, 1964 in Silver Spring, Maryland Rachel Carson, writer, scientist, and ecologist, grew up simply in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania. Her mother bequeathed to her a life-long love of nature and the living world that Rachel expressed first as a writer and later as a student of marine biology. Carson graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College) in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932. She was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to write radio scripts during the Depression and supplemented her income writing feature articles on natural history for the Baltimore Sun. She began a fifteen-year career in the federal service as a scientist and editor in 1936 and rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She wrote pamphlets on conservation and natural resources and edited scientific articles, but in her free time turned her government research into lyric prose, first as an article "Undersea" (1937, for the Atlantic Monthly), and then in a book, Under the Sea-Wind (1941). In 1952 she published her prize-winning study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us, which was followed by The Edge of the Sea in 1955. These books constituted a biography of the ocean and made Carson famous as a naturalist and science writer for the public. Carson resigned from government service in 1952 to devote herself to her writing. She wrote several other articles designed to teach people about the wonder and beauty of the living world, including "Help Your Child to Wonder," (1956) and "Our Ever- Changing Shore" (1957), and planned another book on the ecology of life. Embedded within all of Carson's writing was the view that human beings were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irreversibly. Disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Carson reluctantly changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long term effects of misusing pesticides. In Silent Spring (1962), she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world.
Carson was attacked by the chemical industry and some in government as an alarmist, but courageously spoke out to remind us that we are a vulnerable part of the natural world subject to the same damage as the rest of the ecosystem. Testifying before Congress in 1963, Carson called for new policies to protect human health and the environment. Rachel Carson died in 1964 after a long battle against breast cancer. Her witness for the beauty and integrity of life continues to inspire new generations to protect the living world and all its creatures. Courtesy of www.rachelcarson.org
Rachel Carson Biography Student Sheet Name: Date: Directions: Respond to the following questions in full and complete sentences. Use a dictionary to define the following vocabulary words from the biography piece. Bequeathed Zoology Lyric Prose Naturalist Profligate Vulnerable 1. Judging from the subjects that Carson studied in college and the jobs she had, describe what you think her interests were. 2. Rachel Carson became the Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service when she was 29 years old. What are some things about this situation which make it unique or different? 3. Explain what you think the book Silent Spring will be about and what the message might be now that you know more about the author.
Chapter 1 A Fable for Tomorrow Student Sheet Name: Date: Directions: Read Chapter 1 of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and complete the following questions. 1. Write a brief summary of this chapter (four or five sentences). 2. Pick out some phrases that you think are particularly good at describing the pretty town in the fable. 3. Rachel Carson describes a strange blight that crept over the area. Pick out some phrases that particularly appeal to you that show how the land is dying. 4. What can you guess might have caused the silent spring in this town?
Chapter 3 Elixirs of Death Student Sheet Name: Date: Directions: Read Chapter 3 of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and complete the following questions. 1. Write a brief summary of this chapter (four to five sentences). 2. Rachel Carson identifies pesticide usage as a problem for the environment. List at least four of the pesticides she describes and what they are used for. 3. DDT is one of the pesticides that Rachel Carson lists as being harmful for the environment. Explain why people thought DDT was a wonderful invention when it first came on the market. 4. Rachel Carson published this book in 1962. Do you think that any of the chemicals she lists are still in use? Why or why not?
Chapter 9 Rivers of Death Student Sheet Name: Date: Directions: Read Chapter 9 of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and complete the following questions. 1. Write a brief summary of this chapter (four to five sentences). 2. Explain what Carson describes as the short-term effects of DDT in the salmon habitat and the long-term effects of the DDT in the salmon habitat. 3. List other river and stream species that have been affected by the contamination of the water. 4. Explain the ways in which Carson says that pesticides get into our rivers and streams.
Chapter 12 The Human Price Student Sheet Name: Date: Directions: Read Chapter 12 of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and complete the following questions. 1. Write a brief summary of this chapter (four to five sentences). 2. What do you think Carson means when she writes, Man, however much he would like to pretend to the contrary, is part of nature. Think particularly about humans treatment of the earth. 3. Explain what Carson sees as the threat to human health from pesticides in the long term. 4. Remember that Carson was writing and researching pesticides over forty years ago. If she were writing today, what do you think the greatest threat to the environment would be? 5. Write a paragraph warning people of the threat you have identified. Try to make it as compelling as Carson did.
Class Discussion Questions 1. What is Carson s main means of persuasion in Silent Spring and how sound is this rhetorical choice on her part? 2. How does Carson represent the users of chemical poisons in the book? Are they demonized as a means of setting up a weak opponent in the argument or are they responsibly represented? 3. What is Carson s targeted audience? Is it the chemical companies, the state agencies, or the average citizen? 4. What alternative methods of insect control does Carson write about? Does the alternative sound credible? 5. Determine what kind of persona Carson adopts. Is it the persona of a scientist, a pubic-minded citizen, or an average concerned citizen? How does the persona function in the argument to win the reader s confidence? 6. Why did the author title the book Silent Spring?