Resources to talk or teach about mine disasters

With accidents at both the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia and at the Wangjialing mine in northern China, here are some resources you might use to talk or teach about these disasters and about mining in general.

We will update this post as more becomes available.

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10:29 a.m. April 7 | Updated
Yesterday after we tweeted this post, we got a message from one of our followers, Steve Jones. Steve teaches at City of Medicine Academy, a public high school in Durham, North Carolina, and tweets at http://twitter.com/highschoolpsych. He describes how he helps students connect news like this to their own lives:

In February 2009 I happened to mention in my Civics and Economics class that I had heard about a big mining accident in China. I was surprised when a few kids seemed indifferent, as if it was just too hard to imagine how this connected to their lives. I remembered that 20 lbs./person/day figure from [a Times review of a book called "Black Cloud"; the 20 pounds figure is how many pounds of coal each person in the United States consumes, on average, every day to "keep the electricity flowing"]. So I Googled the reference and included it in our discussion.

Most of my students had no idea that when they plugged their electronics into the wall they were using electricity generated by burning coal. I pulled up this video from YouTube and there was a collective wow from the class. They really had no idea! It was a great discussion that led to bigger questions about how their individual actions can impact the world.

If you re interested in doing something similar to what Mr. Jones suggests, here are the opening paragraphs of the 2006 review of Black Cloud by Jeff Goodell, which you might read aloud to students:

There is perhaps no greater act of denial in modern life than sticking a plug into an electric outlet. No thinking person can eat a hamburger without knowing it was once a cow, or drink water from the tap without recognizing, at least dimly, that its journey began in some distant reservoir. Electricity is different. Fully sanitized of any hint of its origins, it pours out of the socket almost like magic.

In his new book, Jeff Goodell breaks the spell with a single number: 20. That s how many pounds of coal each person in the United States consumes, on average, every day to keep the electricity flowing. Despite its outdated image, coal generates half of our electricity, far more than any other source. Demand keeps rising, thanks in part to our appetite for new electronic gadgets and appliances; with nuclear power on hold and natural gas supplies tightening, coal s importance is only going to increase. As Goodell puts it, our shiny white iPod economy is propped up by dirty black rocks.