Beth Fishburn
STLS Paper Draft 4
October 24, 2011
The earth is in danger of extinction. Drastic conditions exist all over the world. The
ocean levels are rising at an alarming rate, swallowing up tropical islands; massive crop
failures are causing food shortages in developing nations; many animal and plant
species have become extinct, and many more are not far behind; human health in
developing countries is declining; infectious diseases once thought to be all but
eradicated are again becoming a threat. (Markham, 2009) Human population is
growing and resources to maintain it are diminishing. (Washington University in St.
Louis, 2008) The human race has nearly grown itself out of existence. Yet humanity
continues to view the world in a box-like way, when the world operates in a systemic,
symbiotic way. World view needs to change in order to stop and reverse this process.
In this paper, a path for changing world view through education will be described, first
through an understanding of how current education practice does not address the
stated problem. In order to understand the change needed in education, a description of
the learning process will follow. Then there will be a description of the recommended
pedagogy in education, including the role of the teacher, and how that will influence a
shift in world view.
The current state and process of education in the United States is perpetuating the
problem by not educating future adults as to how to fix it. The US Department of
Education declares as its mission, “to promote student achievement and preparation for
global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”
(An Overview of the U.S. Department of Education, 2009) It does not address the issue
of global sustainability; rather it promotes global competition, which is a key factor in the
problem of the declining health of the planet. Nations are continually extracting more
from the earth in the race for the biggest market share and higher standard of living, to
solve world hunger or make a better gadget to make life more convenient, to create,
access, and acquire more ‘stuff’. These pursuits are unsustainable and have dire
consequences. The demand for the products has created a resource deficit as well as
environmental problems associated with accessing the necessary materials to build the
‘stuff’. As a reflection of traditional schooling which Dewey associated with “habits so
fixed as to be institutional” (Dewey, 1938), society has addressed the attendant
problems with simple problem solving, rather than long term solutions. Simple problem
solving, according to Stephen Sterling in Linking Thinking, addresses symptoms rather
than underlying or root causes, doesn’t consider the problem in a larger context, and
may lead to additional problems. (Sterling, 2005) This problem solving in isolation
mirrors the way in which students are taught subjects in school. Teachers present each
subject separately in isolation so when a student attempts to recall information, it is
difficult to access unless the precise situation in which that bit of knowledge was
acquired, is reproduced. It is disconnected “from the rest of experience that it is not
available under the actual conditions of life.” (Dewey, 1938, p. 48) Eaton et al refer to
simple problem solving as ‘technical solutions’. Technical solutions involve putting in
place solutions to problems for which the answer is already known. (TKI Te Kete
Ipurangi) These solutions and simple problem solving are useful in certain situations,
but when attempting to solve global issues, they are not appropriate. That is not a
change in the current view of the world, but a change in which problems are being
solved.
Students are already being taught little snippets of environmental stewardship as
technical solutions, in a simplistic and isolated manner; they reduce, reuse and recycle.
However, when the US Department of Education perceived deficits in the education
system and in 2001, set educational standards in the areas of reading, language arts,
math, and science, it did not address environmental science, sustainability standards, or
integrative teaching practices. The current environmental problems were not absent at
that time, the government and society simply did not associate the decline in the health
of the earth with a need to educate. The governmental and societal world view, then as
now, was compartmentalized and box-like, placing environmental health in an agency,
isolated not connected to other agencies in scope or relationship. According to Eaton et
al, “…the need to reinvent how we (do things)…but sustainability is typically cast as a
set of practical problems for which there are technical solutions.”
Technical solutions involve putting solutions in place to problems for which the answer
is already known. (TKI Te Kete Ipurangi)That is not a change in the current view of the
world, but a change in which problems are being solved.
In his workshop on sustainability, Rob Cole suggests a mismatch between how the
world is and how society at large thinks about it. The world is systemic, symbiotic and
interconnected, like a web. (Cole) Everything affects everything else, because at some
level there is a relationship. Eaton et al also recognize the need to completely change
society’s world view “ to become more capacious- to help citizens everywhere reinvent
how we go about living in the world and, fundamentally how we think about the world
we live in.” (Eaton, Davies, Williams, & MacGregor, 2011)They assert that the
challenges faced today are so important those challenges need to be addressed with
“new mental models and behaviors that can create ecologically healthy, socially just,
and economically sustainable communities.” (Eaton, Davies, Williams, & MacGregor,
2011) Instead of perpetuating the status quo, and seeking improvement in isolated,
separate areas like economic and social paradigms, there must be a change in entire
world view from ‘box-like’ thinking, to systems thinking, including educating
sustainability. The path to that change, on a national level, is through public education.
But public education operates with the same world view as the rest of society, in that
core subjects are taught in isolation, disconnected from other subjects and from life
experience. According to Dewey, “Anything which can be called a study, whether
arithmetic, history, geography, or one of the natural sciences, must be derived from
materials which at the outset fall within the scope of ordinary life experience.” (Dewey,
1938, p. 73) With that in mind, a new look at teaching for sustainability and shifting
world view requires first an understanding of the basic biological action that is learning.
Biology is the foundation of learning. While many factors interact with and influence the
learning process, the structure of the brain and its innate physiologic operations are
designed to change and that is how learning occurs. On a biological level, our brains
are building neurons based on input and mental process. (Walton) Environmental,
social and cultural experiences that influence learning all have biological definitions in
the brain. Piaget identified specific stages of development in children that relate to
physical development. His described stages can be fit into Kolb and McCarthy’s
learning cycle. Human emotion, emotional mechanisms and responses like dissonance
theory and its affect on learning are biological.
In an ideal learning process, experiences first engage the brain in the sensory cortex as
physical information. The mental process continues in to the temporal integrative cortex,
where the concrete information is linked to prior knowledge and analyzed or reflected
upon. The next step in the process is in the frontal integrative cortex, where the neurons
are firing in new directions and creating new mental arrangements. Plans are made for
future action using the newly processed information. The final stage in each cycle of
the learning process takes place in the motor cortex. This area of the brain directly
triggers all coordinated and voluntary muscle contractions to produce movement and
carry out the plans coming from the front integrative cortex. (Zull, 2002) The cycle then
begins again where this action taken becomes the new concrete experience entering
the sensory cortex. In reality, there are many cycles going on simultaneously, and the
learning cycles do not always go in one direction or even in a linear fashion. Different
forms of input- visual, motor, tactile, taste, etc, enter the brain differently and stimulation
of multiple senses helps to create a web of neuronal connections. Signals of
communication bounce back and forth between different parts, but “the cycle cannot be
completed until all the steps have occurred.” (Zull, 2002)
With an understanding of how learning occurs, it is used to inform teaching practices
and change pedagogies.
Park describes a method of teaching leadership called ‘learning by doing’ or ‘case-inpoint’ learning found in Leadership Without Easy Answers, by Ronald Heifetz. The
learning method “draws on several well established learning traditions and methodsseminar, simulation, presentation of ideas and perspectives…discussion and dialogue,
clinical-therapeutic practice, coaching, the laboratory, the art studio, writing as a form of
disciplined reflection and the case study method.” (Parks, 2005) Involving this well
rounded grouping of methods to teach anything is an effective teaching tool as it
engages multiple senses, and accesses many different points in the brain’s neuronal
web, creating a breadth and depth of learning that any one of the above mentioned
methods could not do alone. Dewey suggests that there is a failure in education to
utilize situations exemplary of relationships between means and consequences that
lead a student to grasp that relation. (Dewey, 1938, p. 84) Case in point teaching is also
is an example of systems thinking and teaching, by embedding a systems/symbiotic
response in the brain.
Park also argues that humans learn from experience, and advocates the use of ‘casein-point teaching to “make optimal use of the student’s own past and immediate
experience.” (Parks, 2005) Socrates employed a similar practice in Meno. Socrates
questioned Meno, rather than answered his question. Meno was guided to find his own
truth, rather than blindly accepting something someone else said.
Real-world problems, like genetically modified crops as food, offer opportunities for
case-in-point teaching and systems thinking about the ‘cause of the cause’. (Cole) Such
problems also access learning in a systemic way, by utilizing students’ prior knowledge
and making connections to that, as well as creating a web-like neuronal growth, rather
than linear growth.
The changing pedagogies created by understanding of the need for sustainability
education and accessing learning through understanding its process, necessitate a
change in schooling missions and standards. In the 1990’s the US Federal Government
passed legislation assigning states the task of creating standardized assessments of
rigorous education standards for several academic disciplines. The legislation did not
include sustainability or systems as a required discipline. In order to propagate a
changing world view, sustainability needs to become as valued and recognized as math
and reading in the measurement of student achievement. Currently, Washington state
has adopted integrated environmental and sustainability education learning standards.
(Environmental Sustainability Standards, 2009) .
Sustainability plays an imperative role in education. In the United States today, public
education, education in general, is seen as an incubator for future economic success,
and as an insurance plan for democratic form of government. Sustainability is about
protecting resources – all resources, including social, environmental, economic, and
human- to reverse the damage done in the past and create a future supported by
practices that renew instead of deplete the earth. It is about protecting the earth and all
inhabitants of it.
The earth is in crisis and by extension, the human race and the United States. If the
children of today are to have a future, then their education must include knowledge that
changes how the world is viewed. Awareness that sustainability and an understanding
of the systemic and symbiotic nature of the world is crucial so that a future earth exists
to support future population of all species. Pupils of today are the leaders of that path to
a healthy planet.
The world operates as a group or network of systems. Everything affects everything. In
order to head off the currently inevitable demise of earth, world views must change to
recognize and understand the systemic relationships all over the planet. That
understanding needs to be taught in public schools, in particular in the United States.
Because the US is an economic and political world leader, a national change in an
American world view to include sustainability and change habits of mind and society
that promote the health of the planet instead of health of the capitalists, will lead other
world governments toward that end as well.
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