Education is an awareness of how magnificent animals are. It’s an appreciation of animals. It’s a sense of, as I said at one point, a sense of stewardship, about wildlife and wild places, and the Earth, but it’s important as far as the image of the zoo, because, and first of all, it’s important for children to learn about animals as they really are. And the zoo has real animals, not cartoon characters. The zoo has real animals. Secondly, these youngsters are the greatest little ambassadors in the world, ’cause they get enthused about the zoo and they go home and tell their folks, and then folks get enthused about the zoo. I mean, it’s great when you see a zoo school student taking their parents around and telling the parents all the things about the animals, that’s a great thing, but it shows that the zoo is not just a menagerie of animals sitting in Gage Park. It shows that the zoo has played a vital role in the community, and it’s a living dynamic community institution.
