Silent Spring

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. How many insect pests can you name? How many weeds can you name? How many home/garden insecticide, herbicide, and fungicide products can you name? List your responses in 3 categories as you brainstorm; also, note any descriptions or personal reactions you connect to items on your lists.

Teaching Suggestion: Once students respond in categories on a brainstorming sheet, they might color-code the different kinds of pesticides. Then, discuss students’ experiences with and attitudes about insect pests, weeds, and pesticides. Ask students to delineate between insect pests and beneficial insects. Discuss with students a description of invasive and noxious weeds, particularly in the local region. It would be helpful to locate pictures of insect pests, noxious/invasive weeds, and common pesticide brands.

• The Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides provides a Pesticide Factsheet with brief descriptions of commonly used pesticides and links.
• The EPA provides a chart with common noxious weeds, herbicide trade names, treatment methods and biological controls (as alternatives or supplements to using chemical pesticides).
• The US Forest Service provides a list of noxious weeds and invasive species by state.
• The National Pesticide Information Center provides a chart of beneficial insects, the pests on which they prey, and a brief explanation.

2. Two particularly toxic pesticides commonly used today are glyphosate (an insecticide) and chlorpyrifos (an herbicide). What do you know/want to know about these pesticides, in particular?

Teaching Suggestion: Have students respond on a brainstorming sheet. Discuss with students that insecticides and herbicides are different types of pesticides. Fungicides are a third type of pesticide that target fungal pathogens.

• The National Pesticide Information Center provides a Glyphosate Fact Sheet and a Chlorpyrifos Fact Sheet with helpful overviews.
• The Mercury News in Sacramento, CA published an article about the link between chlorpyrifos and brain damage.
• This 10-minute news segment from PBS discusses the EPA’s decision in 2018 to reverse its preliminary ban on chlorpyrifos.
• Earthjustice published a 7-minute video about a California woman whose son was born with developmental delays after she was exposed to chlorpyrifos during her pregnancy.
• The Conversation provides a useful overview of the current debate about glyphosate use as an agricultural insecticide.
• Bayer published a response to the 2018 study that showed glyphosate’s harmful effects on bees.
• Renewable Farming offers a link to a 52-minute documentary by German film producer Volker Barth called “Poisoned Fields: Glyphosate, an Underrated Risk?”  

Short Activity

One of the major themes in Silent Spring is how chemical pesticides disrupt the web of life/food web, on which all species on Earth, including the human species, depend for their survival. Create a colorful, annotated, poster-sized food web for a particular ecosystem: forest, grassland, desert, tundra, freshwater or marine.

Teaching Suggestion: Guide students to include humans as part of the food web in their selected ecosystem. Set up a poster session in class for students to present and/or view each other’s food webs. Discuss connections to Silent Spring through the shared theme of Web of Life and Nature’s Balance.

• Sciencing provides a useful article on environmental ecosystems: what they are, different types, and flora and fauna found in each.
• This National Geographic article discusses trophic levels in a food web: producers, consumers and decomposers. The examples could be adapted for different ecosystems.