by editor | Jun 21, 2017 | Climate Change & Energy
Climate Change Education: A Student’s Perspective
by Eliot Brody
At my recent high school graduation, I found myself reflecting on the 12 years I spent in Oregon’s largest school district, Portland Public Schools. While I sat through the speeches in my oversized, wrinkly gown, I thought about all that I had learned in those 12 years. And all that I hadn’t.
As I sifted through the many topics that had been covered in my schooling, my thoughts lingered on the conspicuous absence of climate change education—I had known nothing about the greenhouse effect until a guest speaker came into my science class in eighth grade. As a few members of Franklin High School’s graduating class crossed the stage wearing their beaded “wood-cookie” necklaces, my mind conjured vivid images of the place they got those keepsakes; a week in sixth grade that we all spent learning environmental science in the woods near Mt. Hood. Again, though, my nostalgia turned negative as I recalled that we were the last group of students to have the full six-day Outdoor School experience; the following year, Multnomah Education Service District shortened the program to three days. My reflections left me with the conviction that the school system as I knew it could not be counted on to teach climate science.
Reversing the consequences of climate change grows increasingly difficult each day. With this is in mind, we must find ways to teach our youngest students about climate change as early as possible, because they will be the ones most affected by it.
Big Ideas in a Shrunken School
Two months before graduation officially concluded my Portland Public Schools journey, I paid a special visit to the place where it all began, Glencoe Elementary School. I walked through what felt like shrunken hallways in the familiar building, dodging elementary schoolers as they hurried back to class from lunch. Only seven years before, I had been in their position, but I was there now to be their guest teacher. I was accompanied by a classmate and friend, Mabel Miller, and together we had prepared an hour-long presentation on climate change for the school’s fourth graders.
Glencoe has four fourth grade classes, each with around 30 students. Miller and I planned to teach lessons in two of the classes that day, before presenting to the other two classes the following day. As we prepared our Google Slides presentation in our first class, there was an audible hubbub among the fourth graders about the two unfamiliar teenagers standing awkwardly at the front of their classroom. One brave student even called out to us, “Who are you?” Before we could say anything, Ms. Clark, the teacher, hushed her class and reminded them who we were by pointing to the day’s schedule on a chalkboard. Scrawled in white chalk was, “Franklin High School visitors,” next to, “12:00 p.m.”
I glanced out at the large group of antsy nine and ten year-olds, then over at Miller. Her face displayed my own worries: how will we keep the attention of these kids? I silently thanked her for preparing an interactive, climate change-themed activity to do with the students when they got restless. Ms. Clark turned to us with a smile and informed us that we could start whenever we were ready. I leaned over to turn on the projector, and we introduced ourselves and began.
First, we gauged the fourth graders’ prior knowledge on the subject. We asked what the phrase “climate change” made the students think about and how it made them feel. We got a variety of responses, from “it makes me sad” to detailed accounts of the polar ice caps melting. Then, we showed slides explaining:
- The distinction between “climate” and “weather,” and how climate change is different from seasonal fluctuations in temperature and weather.
- The atmosphere, how it can vary in size, and what that means for average temperatures on the Earth. We displayed a series of diagrams showing atmospheres of varying sizes, and how much heat could escape in each scenario. We also used plenty of analogies:
- “It’s like your blanket at night. You don’t want one that’s too heavy, or else you’ll be too hot.”
- “It’s like sitting in a hot car in the summer. The windows let the warmth from the sunlight in, and then that heat gets trapped in the car.”
- Fossil fuels and how humans use them.
- Greenhouse gases and how they cause the greenhouse effect. We specifically highlighted and explained carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor.
- The many effects of climate change. We made the tougher ideas as relatable for the students as possible, including talking about what coral bleaching means for the livelihood of the aquatic characters in the popular Disney movies Finding Nemo and Finding Dory.
- Small and big things that the students could do to fight climate change.
As soon as we got into the material, it was apparent that the kids were interested—far more interested than we had anticipated. We had expected our presentation to take the first 40 minutes, leaving 20 minutes for the activity, but the students’ many questions and comments stretched our slideshow to take up the whole hour. Instead of being bored or disinterested, the students wanted to learn more about each detail and share their own stories and experiences. We received a chorus of genuine-sounding “thank you’s” from the students as we left.
In the next class, our presentation ran even more smoothly. I was consistently surprised by how much the students wanted to participate and ask questions, and again we finished the presentation without having to use the activity to fill time or focus the students. At the end, a number of students came up to personally thank us, and one girl gave me a bookmark emblazoned with the words, “save the earth.”
The classes we presented to the following day were just as welcoming and curious. The experience we had gained from the previous day gave us more confidence as we taught. By the end of the second day, we had given a crash course on climate change’s underlying science and effects to well over 100 students. More importantly, we had showed what they could individually do to help. It had only taken four hours of our time, and the teachers had happily extended their rooms, students, and class time to our cause. The four teachers, all of whom had been around when Miller and I attended Glencoe, even gave us a thank-you card.
Education, the Best Form of Activism
So, how did Miller and I end up back in our elementary school two months before graduation?
At Franklin, we had both taken a class called Environmental Justice and Sustainability. The format of the elective was to have each student work on year-long projects related to sustainability. The class was only two years old, having been started in the 2015-16 school year, but it had already made big strides and inspired the adoption of a similar class by the same name at another PPS school, Lincoln High School. Miller, as president of Franklin’s Earth Club, had used the class to increase the club’s size and presence in the school community (this year, over 60 students were in the club). Students had also created and run a bottles-and-cans recycling system and started a vegetable garden, among other endeavors. The class had even been able to improve Franklin’s resource conservation strategies enough for the school to earn recognition as a Merit-Level Oregon Green School.
My project was to coordinate outreach from our “green team” to other nearby communities, including the rest of the PPS high schools. Earlier in the year, I had focused on high school outreach by helping form a coalition of students called High School Environmental Leadership Project (HELP). HELP brings together high school students every other week to work on environmental activism and make each PPS high school more sustainable. One long-term HELP goal is to write a city ordinance that would bind Portland lawmakers to reducing emissions. The project is called YouCAN (Youth Climate Action Now) and is based on a model that has been used in four other Oregon cities: Eugene, Bend, Corvallis, and Ashland. One tactic that was used in Eugene was to have students testify in front of the city council in favor of adopting the ordinance. YouCAN organizers in Eugene described the importance of having youth of all ages testify, so HELP decided that elementary school outreach would be an important step in furthering this goal. At the end of our elementary school presentation, we told students that one of the big ways they could contribute to the cause is by attending a HELP summer camp or even testifying in front of city council at some point. Many students seemed interested in this, and we told the teachers that we would keep them posted as the project developed. HELP’s climate justice action camp will be held on August 24th and 25th this summer for rising third graders, fourth graders, and fifth graders.
Miller and I had a number of reasons for teaching at Glencoe. It furthered our work with HELP and allowed us to reach out as Franklin green team members to elementary school students in the Franklin neighborhood. Most importantly, though, it allowed us to teach about climate change to the generation that will be most affected by it. It is extremely important that students are taught at a young age to trust the scientists on this issue and not the corporate propaganda.
Get High Schoolers Teaching Climate Science
After the successful lessons at Glencoe, I wanted to continue to teach elementary schoolers about climate change. I emailed a 4th grade teacher at Atkinson Elementary, another school in the Franklin neighborhood. The teacher, Amy Nunn, seemed enthusiastic about the lessons, and about a week after the Glencoe lessons, Miller and I headed into Atkinson to teach Nunn’s class. The experience was slightly different, as I hadn’t gone to school at Atkinson. Even so, I felt more comfortable teaching this time. For the first time, Miller and I were able to fit the climate change activity into the presentation. For the activity, we gave the students “before and after” pictures of glaciers. Half of the pictures dated back to the early 20th century, and half were modern pictures of the same glaciers. They looked very different, which made the matching process difficult for the students, and also showed them the effects of climate change.
Once again, it felt wonderful to be able to teach younger students about such an important topic. Nunn also saw another benefit to the lessons. “In fourth grade, students learn and practice the speaking skills needed to effectively convey a message to an audience,” she said. “Having high school students model exemplary speaking skills provided the younger students with a real life example of how to effectively educate an audience.”
PPS and other school systems have shown that they don’t see climate education as a priority. I wish that I could have been taught much earlier about the causes and effects of climate change; I could have started my activism at a younger age if that had been the case. Sometimes, though, you have to make your own solution to problems like these. There are few roadblocks preventing high schoolers from emailing their elementary school teachers and asking to borrow some class time to teach about climate change.
Nunn added, “As a professional educator, I would gladly welcome back future high school students to share their scientific understanding of how the local decisions we make directly impact our Earth at a global level and how we can live more responsibly to prevent further, negative changes to the Earth’s climate.”
Eliot Brody is a recent graduate of Franklin High School in Portland, Oregon. He has been accepted to continue his studies in climate change education at Occidental College in Los Angeles. We hope that Eliot will be willing to contribute future articles as he learns more about climate change education.
by editor | Dec 9, 2010 | Climate Change & Energy, Conservation & Sustainability, Outstanding Programs in EE
The Cool School Challenge engages schools from all across the country in strategies to reduce CO2 emissions
by Katie Fleming, Rhonda Hunter & Kimberly Cline
Extreme weather events, rising sea levels, melting glaciers – oh my! While climate change is an overwhelming issue, there is certainly hope, especially in the collective power of individual actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the underlying principle of the Cool School Challenge, an innovative climate education program that motivates students, teachers and school districts to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions school-wide. At the heart of the program is the philosophy that big changes start with small steps – and taken together, simple individual actions create a world of difference. Cumulatively, we CAN reduce our carbon footprint and it’s already happening! (more…)
by editor | Nov 2, 2010 | Climate Change & Energy, Conservation & Sustainability
We need new strategies to preserve the habitability of the planet.
by David Orr
TRADING STORIES one day about smart animals, I heard from an old farmer who described a wily fox that appeared at the edge of a clearing in which his dog was tethered to a pole in the yard. Inferring from the pattern of tracks, the empty dog dish, and the fact that the dog was bound up to the pole, he deduced that the fox had run in circles just outside the radius of the dog’s tether until he had tied the dog up, at which point he strutted in to devour the dog’s food while the helpless mutt looked on.
Something like that has happened to all of us who believe nature and ecosystems to be worth preserving and that this is a matter of obligation, spirit, true economy, and common sense. Someone or something has run us in circles, tied us up, and is eating our lunch. It is time to ask who, why, and how we might respond. (more…)
by editor | May 19, 2010 | Climate Change & Energy, Conservation & Sustainability, Equity and Inclusion, Gardening, Farming, Food, & Permaculture
The symbolic act of learning and living sustainability in the future should intermingle the fabric of natural systems and human made social systems
by Pramod Parajuli, Ph.D.
Doctoral Program in Sustainability Education
Prescott College
Introduction
The hundreds of thousands of initiatives of this blessed moment are not about the bread and butter, or just about the soil and water alone. Art and the things of beauty are emerging from the most ordinary—a permaculture household in El Salvador, a thread of garlic organically grown in the Chino Valley, Arizona, a solar cooker in the remote Nepalese Himalayas, a Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, a sustainable fishing regulation in British Columbia, or a bag of coffee produced under the canopy of agro-forestry in Chiapas, Mexico. One solar cooker at a time, one biogas at a time, there are millions of solutions, sprouting amidst crisis and seeming chaos. The time has come as William Blake wrote:
To see a world in the grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
What might all these imply as we prepare the future generations of learners, educators and leaders? The eight transitional insights I offer below testify that the symbolic act of learning and living sustainability in the future should intermingle the fabric of natural systems and human made social systems—two most complex systems on earth. A new sustainable human trajectory will not be of humans alone shooting to Mars; it will require re-rooting ourselves with all our multiple senses, and working along with all more than human species.
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First, there is an Inviting Context: Climate of Change amidst Climate Change
By now, almost all have accepted that the climate change is real, undeniable, and is accelerating very fast. Most among us also admit that climate change is caused largely due to the way we live our lives, the ways we extract, use and waste our resources. Many also agree that it is urgent to address it from all dimensions. Fortunately, ferocity of these very real crises are accompanied by a “climate of change.” This is the focus of my paper here, a unique opportunitythat accompanies climate change.
The “climate of change” is evident in the way hundreds of thousands of people and groups who are already involved in changing the way we have been doing things, living our lives or using our tools. In his new book, Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken estimates that worldwide there are at least 2 million such initiatives. Maybe there are more, certainly not less.
Second, learning sustainability should help us live lives and be well in the World.
Let me offer a working definition of learning sustainability. Learning sustainability is “an art and a process that could reorient human beings to become a beneficial member of an abundant biosphere.” First, it is an art and a process. Second, the intent of this art and process is to reorient humans from one mindset/worldview to another that will then lead to new visions, dreams and designs. Third, humans can be beneficial members of the biosphere and that the human needs and that of the biosphere do not have to be in conflict but can be mutually enhancing. Fourth, the biosphere is abundant and based on that we can create foundations for an abundant and equitable human life. Fifth, that we can prepare the next generation who can be beneficial members and who can make the biosphere abundant.
As sustainability educators, at the core of our concern is nothing less than “life” itself. For me the message is loud and clear: We can be resilient and bounce back towards a sound and satisfying life systems for humans and other-than-humans. But as the author of Biomimicry, Janine Benyus, advises, we have to learn from our own evolutionary trajectory and the memory line of DNA. She reminds us to be humble of our techno-industrial accomplishments because other organisms have done everything we humans want to do without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting the planet, over harvesting water, depleting soil or mortgaging their future. For example, how do other species clean themselves and why do humans need soap, shampoo and hot water to clean? Rather than asking “What is the least toxic detergent to use?”, a more hopeful question, Janine Benyus, suggests, might be: “How does nature stay clean?” How does nature thermo-regulate? How could our ecological designs be informed by these biophilic insights?
Third, Food and Gardens could be a Gateway to Deep and Delicious Social Engagements
For the last six years, I was involved in designing and implementing the learning gardens experiment in Portland, Oregon, and now in Prescott, Arizona. We found that engaging children and youth in food and garden can offer avenues for a mode of learning that is multicultural, multisensory, interdisciplinary and intergenerational (Parajuli, 2006; Parajuli , Dardis and Hahn, 2008).
We have been a pioneer in developing curriculum for K-8 children and youth who learn at any point in the continuum between, what I call the “soil to supper, and back to Soil
(the SoSuS) loop. The SOSuS Loop not only connects children and youth with the earth, it also connected people to people, communities to communities (Parajuli, 2009). We then explore the continuum between “food to foodshed” and “water to watershed.”
Our initial conclusion is that if designed carefully and tended with heart, learning gardens may offer a series of benefits to enhance and deepen learning:
• impact a school’s physical as well as learning environments
• lead to academic enrichment and achievement for students
• enrich learning of the whole child
• cultivate and nurture motivation, resiliency and leadership among children and youth
• promote multi-sensory learning
• be applicable to grade by grade, subject by subject, and season by season instruction and learning
• use recurring themes over K-12 span of experience
• effectively link ecology, culture and learning
• enhance interdisciplinary inquiry
• address and fulfill academic benchmarks
• provide the seasonal framework for learning
• teach both time (linear and cyclical) and a sense of place
• link experience to meaning, thought to action and classroom to community
• be the best sites for inter- and intra-generational learning, and
• connect/collaborate with the larger food and garden community
Not only in the arena of nutrition and learning, our engagement in food, water and soil can take us towards a mode of social engagement that is not only “deep” but also “delicious.” Interestingly, the flavor of local, organic, and sustainable food economy is much more alive in urban centers than in rural farms and communities. Here again we are witnessing the melting of the old fences that divide the rural from urban, industry from agriculture, soil from food and people from the planet. By changing our food habits and preferences, we are witnessing a wide-ranging and a deep process of change from the very belly of the techno-industrial beast and what the food author Michael Pollan calls, the nutritional/chemical complex. Transition towards local and sustainable food could give us the most delicious inter-economic partnership, as premised in the diagram below.
Fourth, Enhance Maximum Partnerships to create a world that is not only Ecologically Sustainable, but also Socially Equitable and Bio-culturally Diverse.
For the last seven years, I have developed and used a “Partnership Model of Sustainability” as a guide to practice pedagogy for transformational leadership among the new generation of learners and leaders. This model addresses the issues of economy and ecology on the one hand and equity and bio-cultural diversity on the other.
A brief description of the four partnerships follows.
Intra and Inter-generational partnership: Explores social classes, gender, caste, race, ethnicity and other human created institutions and practices of social inequities and cleavages. Attention to intra and inter generational equity and partnership is urgent because inequality is also at the core of current ecological crisis.
Inter-species Partnership: Addresses ecological, philosophical and ethical aspects of human’s relationship with the more than human worlds. I am teaching that we humans are nature in microcosm. “We are nature in every molecule and neuron,” says Paul Hawken. “We contain clay, mineral and water; are powered by sunshine through plants; and are intricately bound to all species, from fungi to marsupials to bacteria. In our lungs are oxygen molecules breathed by every type of creature to have lived on earth along with the very hydrogen and oxygen that Jesus, Gautam Buddha and Rachel Carson breathed” (Hawken, 2007:71-72).
Inter-cultural Partnership: Examines the field of biological, cultural, and linguistic diversities and the inextricable relations between the three. It is about recognizing what I call the “ethnosphere,” the diversity of knowledge systems and diverse ways of knowing, teaching and learning.
Inter-economic Partnership: Includes mapping and reshaping of the global North and South as well as the social and economic institutions, trade, arrangements for exchanges and surplus, fair trade and free trade, rural and urban, agriculture and industry, raw and processed materials, and producers and consumers. Moreover, water, food and soil will be one of the most critical elements in the future of humanity.
Fifth, Learn and Lead for both Biospehric and Ethnospheric Health.
Through a deeper probing of the partnership model of sustainability, I have learned that no human solutions could be found by just rearranging the human world. We need to reshape our relationship with the more than human world. In the same way, ecosystems regeneration could not also be achieved by “fencing off” humans from the so called pristine natural areas but by changing how humans live their lives (Parajuli, 2004; 2001 (a and b). Thus our challenge is how to maintain the delicate balance between biospheric health and ethnospheric health.
In order to create the confluence between the three realms, the learning environment should be multisensory, multicultural and intergenerational such that it fosters interdisciplinary inquiry. Much ink has been dried writing about multicultural education, as if adequate solutions were found simply by rearranging human relations, in race, class and gender terms. While that is absolutely necessary, it is tragically inadequate. I realize that the future lies in multi-sensory pedagogy that nurtures our multi-sensory engagement in and with the earth. As eco-philosopher David Abram awakens us: “The fate of the earth depends on a return to our senses.”
Sixth, Learning should inculcate Integral Visions and Designs
The readers of this journal have worked miracles in the outward-bound and experiential education fields. But most of this genre is poised as antithetical to skills needed for what I call the “homewardbound.” On the other side, many of us have worked in creating sustainable livelihoods, through agro-ecology, permaculture, fisheries, sustainable industries and such. These homeward-bounders have hardly any time to enjoy raw nature, like the “outwardbounders” do.
There is hardly any dialogue, sharing and mutual learning between the two genres. Such isolation does not allow us to find integral visions or integrative solutions. In other words, how could we bring the David Thoreau(s) and Wendell Berry(s) in the same imagination? Vandana Shiva(s) and Jenine Benyus(s) at the same table? I urge us to develop such learning designs that connect the outward-bounders with the homeward-bounders, the wild with the domestic, nature with culture and the forest with the farm. A deeply and truly integrative vision and design is needed to heal the wounds that have been inflicted between the cities, where most of the consumption happens, and the rural where most of the production happens. The same could be accomplished between the industrial sector that eats up bunch of raw materials and agriculture where such raw materials are sustained. How could we bind the buyers and the producers by the same thread of ecological health, diversity, justice and integrity?
Seventh, let us move from Discourse to Design
My students tell me that they want to learn deep sustainability in product as well as process, in content as well as the method of inquiry. I am convinced, it is not by saturating them with discursive pessimism (even when substantiated with facts) but cultivating in them incurable optimism but which is informed by reliable dreams and viable designs. In my courses, such as Leadership for Sustainability, Sustainability Theory and Practice, Modes of Scholarly Inquiry, each student begins to articulate his/her wildest dream that they want to achieve in ten years. Then they follow a 4Ds protocol: Diagnosis, Dream, Design and Delivery. It is important that we embrace diversity of learning needs of each student and let them grow into their own space and dreams. But push them to the wildest side, we must.
Eighth, Cultivate Leadership in the open Space of Democracy
Terry Tempest Williams has articulated the notion of open space of democracy for our turbulent times. She writes: Open space of democracy is interested in circular, not linear power—power reserved not for entitled few but shared by many (Williams 2004). I also want to introduce a fairly new book by Otto Scharmer, entitled, Theory U: Leading from the future as it emerges. To begin with, Otto asks us to have open mind, open heart and open will. Only when we let go of the old habits, dreams and designs (the left line of the U), we can transition towards letting come of the new habits, designs and dreams (the right line of the U). The bottom line of the U is the incubation process between the letting go and letting come.
I urge the readers, you draw a U and practice for yourself.
Selected References
Benyus, Jenine. (2004). “Biomimicry: What would nature do here?” in Nature’s operating instructions: The true biotechnologies. Ausubel, K. and Harpignies, J.P. (eds). San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. PP 3-16.
Capra, Fritjof. (2002). Hidden Connections. Integrating the Biological, Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Life into Science of Sustainability. New York: Doubleday.
Hawken, Paul. (2007). Blessed unrest: How the largest movement in the world aame into being and why no one saw it coming. New York: Viking (published by the Penguin Group).
Jones, Van. (2008). The green collar economy: How one solution can fix our two pressing problems. New York: Harper Collins.
Parajuli, Pramod. (2009). Greening Our Cultures: Emergent Properties of Life and Livelihoods, Learning and Leadership. Manuscript. Prescott College.
Parajuli, Pramod. (2006a). “Learning suitable to life and livability: Innovations through learning gardens” Connections 8: 1: 6-7.
Parajuli, Pramod. (2006b). ‘Coming home to the earth household: Indigenous communities and ecological citizenship in India” in J. Kunnie and N. Goduka Eds. Indigenous Peoples’ Wisdom and Power. London: Ashgate. pp. 175-193.
Parajuli, Pramod. (2004). Revisiting Gandhi and Zapata: Motion of global capital, geographies of difference and the formation of ecological ethnicities. in Mario Blaser and Harvey Feit eds, In the way of development: Indigenous Peoples, life projects and globalization. London: Zed Press. Chapter 14. pp. 235-255.
Parajuli, Pramod. (2001). How can four trees make a jungle? The world and the wild. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. pp. 3-20.
Parajuli, Pramod, Dardis, Greg and Hahn, Tim. (2008). Curriculum Development and Teacher Preparation for the Learning Gardens. A report submitted to the Oregon Community Foundation.
Shiva, Vandana. (2006). Earth democracy. Boston: Southend Press.
Stone, Michael. K and Barlow, Zenobia. (eds.). (2005). Ecological literacy: Educating our children for a sustainable world. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
Williams, Terry, Tempest. (2004). The open space of democracy. Barrington, MA: Orion Society.[/password]
Pramod Parajuli is the Director of Program Development in Sustainabililty Education at Prescott College in Arizona. He has designed and developed various academic and community empowerment programs including the Learning Gardens and the Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning (LECL), a graduate program at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon (2002-2008). At Prescott College, he is incubating several new innovations that could build on its forty years of accomplishments and seek new heights and horizons.
by editor | Mar 12, 2010 | Climate Change & Energy, Equity and Inclusion
by Chet A. Bowers
hat is ironic, even tragic for future generations, is that the various approaches to educational reform being advocated by politicians, parents, and professional educators in the United State do not take account of the rapid changes occurring in the Earth’s ecosystems. Equally tragic is that these approaches to reform, like an unchecked virus, are spreading to other regions of the world.
These reforms do not take account of the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring and that is it being caused by human activity. Nor have the decline of key fisheries such as those of the Grand Banks and the North Sea, and the impact of the over 80,000 synthetic chemicals introduced into the environment on the viability of natural systems ranging from marine ecosystems to human health, influenced the different agendas for educational reform. Indeed, one of the central points to be made is that the reform proposals, as varied as they are, are based on a common set of cultural assumptions that were formed before there was an awareness of ecological limits.
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This indifference toward considering the educational implications of the ecological crisis will lead to a further expansion in economic activity and technological dependence that, in turn, will continue the pattern of undermining the sustaining capacity of natural systems. That globalization is also being understood in terms of expanding markets in ways that will introduce more of the world’s population to the North American lifestyle of consumerism makes the prospects of future generations even more problematic.
Proposals for educational reform being adopted in the United States and elsewhere can be grouped into three categories: (1) the so-called conservative agenda of promoting school accountability, a voucher system, and charter schools; (2) the across the political spectrum support for making computers the central feature of the educational process; and (3) the continuing efforts of professors of education who carry on the Dewey/Freire tradition of thinking of the classroom as preparing students to develop the critical capacity to construct their own knowledge and values.
The suggestion that these approaches to educational reform are based on a common set of ecologically problematic cultural assumptions may appear as naïve and thus ill founded. However, closer consideration of the conceptual basis of these approaches to educational reform brings the problems into proper perspective. The drive to hold teachers accountable for student achievement, as well as the efforts of parents to exert more control over the education of their children (home schooling, vouchers, charter schools) are largely driven by a concern with ensuring that students are better prepared to enter a rapidly changing work environment—and thus to enjoy the benefits of a consumer dependent lifestyle.
The massive financial effort to make computers the primary medium of learning is based on the assumption that cyberspace will be the venue for most of tomorrow’s relationships, communication, and economic activity. The advocates of computer mediated learning justify marginalizing the role of public school teachers and university professors on the grounds that access to data better enables students to construct their own knowledge. Furthermore, as computers are being viewed as free of the misinformation and ideological bias of public school teachers and university professors, they are widely supported by advocates of the so-called “conservative” list of educational reforms.
Before explaining the nature of the deep cultural assumptions that underlie these three often overlapping approaches to educational reform it needs to be pointed out that the liberal and radical approaches to educational reform, where the emancipation of the student from the influence of intergenerational traditions is the main goal, are also complicit in contributing to a lifestyle that is ecologically unsustainable. That is, emancipatory approaches to education undermine different cultural approaches to passing on intergenerational knowledge, including patterns of moral reciprocity, essential to less consumer driven lives.
Contrary to conventional thinking, emancipatory approaches to education do not represent an alternative to traditional approaches to education that further technological development and economic growth. What is seldom recognized is that the goal of educational emancipation is based on the same cultural assumptions that were the basis of the Industrial Revolution. These shared assumptions include the following: that change is constant, linear in nature, and the expression of progress; that the autonomous individual is the basic social unit and that attaining even greater autonomy is a constant goal; that anthropocentrism is the most efficacious way of relating to Nature. The connection between the ideal of the emancipated, self-directing individual and the form of subjectivity required by the Industrial Revolution can be seen in the way the individual who has been liberated from intergenerationally acquired knowledge, skills, and patterns of mutual aid is more dependent upon consumerism to meet daily needs.
These same cultural assumptions underlie what is mistakenly called the “conservative” educational reform agenda. With the exception of some approaches to home schooling and charter schools, the conservative reforms are also based on thinking of change as the expression of progress, the individual as self-directing and a competitor in the market place, and an anthropocentric way of relating to Nature—and that these assumptions should be adopted by other cultures as the basis of their future development. The more ideologically driven approaches to educational reform are also based on the assumption that the “invisible hand” that supposedly governs market activities will also ensure that the best will emerge from the competition between approaches to educational reform. While the label of conservatism goes unquestioned by the general public, the underlying assumptions upon which their educational proposals are based gave conceptual direction and moral legitimacy to the Industrial Revolution and were more fully articulated by Classical Liberal thinkers—neither of which contributed to conserving self-reliant communities, different cultural ways of knowing, and biodiversity.
Before explaining why the ecological crisis now requires that we adopt educational reforms that are genuinely conserving in nature, the ideological orientation inherent in computer mediated learning needs to be made explicit. Contrary to popular thinking, and to how they are represented in the media and by the computer industry, computers are not a culturally neutral technology. The culturally specific way of knowing reinforced by computers can be more clearly recognized by comparing the forms of knowledge and relationships that can be digitized with those that cannot be abstracted and encoded without being fundamentally changed. The digitized forms of knowledge and relationships reinforced by computers include the following: (1) explicit and context-free forms of knowledge that can be represented as objective data and information; (2) a conduit view of language that supports the myth of objectivity and individually-centered rational thought; (3) the experience of being an autonomous individual who makes decision and value judgments; (4) a subjective perspective on what aspects, if any, of tradition and the future are relevant; ( 5) a taken-for-granted attitude toward the commodification of thought and communication; and (6) an anthropocentric perspective on human/Nature relationships
The following forms of knowledge, relationships, and experiences cannot be digitized and represented on the screen without being fundamentally misrepresented: (1) the tacit, contextual and analog patterns of daily experience—which vary widely among cultural groups; (2) the layered metaphorical nature of language—which includes the root metaphors that provide the meta-schemata that frames the process of analogical thinking and are encoded in the iconic metaphors used in daily discourse; (3) the culturally specific nature of intelligence and patterns of metacommunication that are the basis of moral reciprocity; (4) the differences in how members of different cultures experience the past and future as integral aspects of the present; (5) the face-to-face intergenerational knowledge that includes identity forming narratives, rituals, ceremonies, and mentoring relationships; (6) the embodied forms of knowing that connect thought and self-identity to the local landscape.
The culturally specific way of knowing and communicating reinforced by computers has largely gone unnoticed by academics and members of the dominant culture, partly because of the widely held assumption that computers are a tool and partly because the cultural patterns reinforced by computers are identical to the conceptual patterns learned in public schools and universities. Indeed, a strong case can be made that computers reinforce the patterns of thinking and communicating that were the basis of the Industrial Revolution—and that the globalizing of computer mediated thinking now reinforces what has become the digital phase of the Industrial Revolution. Computers are used in many important ways, including their usefulness in eco-management projects. But they are nevertheless a colonizing technology that undermine cultural traditions not centered on individualism, consumerism and a material view of progress, and dependency upon technologies created by the increasingly close alliance between universities and international corporations.
Instead of educational reforms based on the environmentally destructive assumptions that that have guided the process of modernization over the last 300 or so years, we (and the world) need to adopt approaches to education that are genuinely conserving in orientation. This will require basing educational reform on the following assumptions: (1) that humans are not separate and thus not in control of nature, but are integral and thus dependent upon Nature’s self-renewing capacities; (2) that cultural/linguistic diversity is essential to maintaining biological diversity; (3) that intergenerational knowledge that strengthens the ability to live less consumer dependent lives must be given a more central place in the curricula of public schools and universities; (4) that curriculum reforms should contribute to democratizing decisions about the development and use of technology, and the priorities in scientific research. Eco-justice is the phrase that best takes these assumptions into account, as it represents a fundamental shift in how to understand the connections between education and the renewing of communities in ways that lead to a smaller adverse impact on ecosystems.
The aspects of eco-justice that can be addressed most directly by reforming our educational institutions include the problem of environmental racism, the disparity of wealth and political power between North and South caused, in large part, by the hyper-consumerism required by the economies of the North; the need to renew the intergenerational knowledge still retained by different cultural groups that represent alternatives to consumer and technology dependent lifestyles; and right of future generations to live in environments that have not been degraded. Addressing these eco-justice issues will require educational reforms that enable students to understand how language carries forward earlier ways of thinking that did not take account of how cultural ecologies are dependent upon natural ecologies. Curricular reforms also need to enable students to understand the ecological implications of print-based intergenerational knowledge that creates new forms of economic and technological dependencies, and the forms of face-to-face intergenerational knowledge that contributes to greater self-sufficiency and mutual aid within families and communities.
Specifically, this means helping students become more fully aware of the many aspects of daily life that have become commodified, and that contribute to the cycle of turning Nature into products that, after a short use, are returned to the environment in the form of toxic waste and every expanding landfills. In addition to surveying how dependent the average person has become on monetized relationships and activities, it is important for students to learn about the non-monetized aspects of community life. These will vary widely, depending upon cultural group. This requires learning about the forms of intergenerational knowledge, skills, and activities that are passed on in face-to-face relationships. Who are the elders of the community? And how are they different from older people still committed to the materialistic promise of success and happiness that has contributed to trashing the environment? Who are the mentors that can introduce the students to the arts, gardening, healing, and craft knowledge—and can model how to live more self-sufficient lives? What ceremonies, forms of entertainment, and nature-centered activities are still carried on within different cultural groups? Who are the storytellers who can help students obtain a more long-term understanding of the bioregion that sustains them. Stories of human hubris that have led to degrading the environment, as well as accounts of how others have lived by an environmental ethic, will help students understand how they are connected both to the folly and wisdom of previous generations, and to the land.
Learning about the face-to-face traditions still carried on within the different cultural groups that make up the student’s neighborhood, as well as how to participate in activities that strengthen the bonds of community, is essentially a conserving activity. It contributes to the renewal of intergenerational knowledge, the nurturing of student talent, and the broadening of the student’s awareness of alternatives to being dependent upon shopping malls and the media. By reducing the dependence upon a consumer, technology dependent lifestyle, it changes the cycle that leads to dumping toxic waste in the backyards of the most vulnerable groups. It also reduces the need to exploit the environments of non-western cultures. And in slowing the transformation of the environment into products that fill the shelves of shopping malls, it helps to ensure that future generations will find an environment that has not been devastated by the greed and folly of previous generations.
Eco-justice oriented educational reforms will contribute to reducing economic growth, which is now being forced upon us by global warming and other changes in natural systems. But this should not be viewed as lowering people’s quality of life. Indeed, as more emphasis is put on participatory relationships and activities that expand personal talents and mutual interests, the quality of life will be expanded. As a writer from the Third World put it, we need to understand wealth in a new way. That is, wealth should be understood in terms of the quality of relationships and community-centered lives and not in terms of economic gains that degrade personal lives and the diversity of the environment.
While the educational reforms suggested here go against the grain of current thinking, they are based on the realities of the present—and not on the myths that co-evolved with the Industrial Revolution. The educational reform agendas of the so-called conservatives, the techno-optimists, and the emancipatory educators continue to be based on a set of myths that represent progress as a human project that is independent of what happens to the environment. To reiterate a key point, the emphasis on the individual as a worker and consumer, as a participant in cyberspace, and as engaged in the unending quest of self-realization and emancipation, will not be easy to change—or even for many people to recognize as contributing to the ecological crisis. We are now faced with a scale of environmental change that has led to the demise of previous cultures that failed to change their belief system and technological practices. We now need to engage in a serious discussion of the educational implications of global warming, which should focus on the basis of our belief system and not just on technological fixes. And we need to learn from other cultures, particularly those that have not taken the western path of economic development, about how it is possible to live without economic activities becoming the dominant aspect of our lives.
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Chet A. Bowers is Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon. Professor Bowers’ most recent books include The Culture of Denial (1997); Let Them Eat Data (2000); and Educating for Eco-Justice and Community (2001); and Detras de la Apariencia: Hacia la Descolonizacion de la Educacion (2002).
