The multiple ongoing exhibitions in New York City focusing on King Tutankhamun and Egyptiana, as well as an ancillary Tut show in Denver, celebrate one of the first visible flowerings of human creativity the invention of the human, to borrow a term from critic Harold Bloom, and are worthy undertakings.
When teachers guide students in gaining awareness that industrial agriculture writ large, for example, results in chemical runoff from nitrogen-based fertiliers in the Mississippi River that in turn creates a massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico so large that it is visible to the human eye through satellite distant imaging, students are able to grasp the basis for sustainable agriculture.