Beth Fishburn
STLS Paper Draft 3
October 18, 2011
The earth is in danger of extinction. Drastic conditions exist all over the world;
agriculture, animal populations, water, water needs and economies are suffering and
will suffer further. Human population is growing and resources to maintain it are
diminishing. 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.
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.”
(Overview, 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;
fossil fuels, rare earth metals, overfishing, chemical dumping, genetically modified
organisms, are all technical solutions to problems humans created.
Students are already being taught little snippets of environmental stewardship as
technical solutions, in a simplistic and isolated manner, e.g. reduce, reuse, recycle.
According to Eaton et al, “…these activities represent a new recognition of 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 in place solutions 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 aver that the challenges we and our
children face today are so important we need to address them 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 ‘boxlike’ thinking, to systems thinking, including educating sustainability. The path to that
change, on a national level, is through public education.
In order to optimize education, it is essential to understand how learning occurs.
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 is biological at its base.
In an ideal process, experiences first engage the brain in the sensory cortex as physical
information. The mental process continues in tot the temporal integrative cortex, where
the concrete information is linked to prior knowledge and analyzed or reflected upon.
The net 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 at the same time, and
they 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, that knowledge 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. It 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 sustainable
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 our future economic
success, and as an insurance plan for our democratic form of government.
Sustainability is about protecting resources – all resources, including social,
environmental, economic, and human- to reverse the damage we have done in the past
and create a future supported by practices that renew instead of deplete the earth. It is
about protecting our species and our planet.
Our planet is in crisis and by extension, our race, and our country. If the children of
today are to have a future, then their education must include knowledge that we must
change how we view the world. They need to gain awareness that sustainability and an
understanding of the systemic and symbiotic nature of the world is their path to a future,
and that they are the leaders along that path.
The world operates as a group or system 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.
Bibliography
Cole, R. (n.d.). Faculty, Master in Teaching Program, The Evergreen State College. Olympia, Washington,
USA.
Eaton, M., Davies, K., Williams, S., & MacGregor, J. (2011). Why Sustainability Education Needs
Pedagogies of Reflection adn Contemplation., (pp. 1-10).
Environmental Sustainability Standards. (2009). Retrieved October 17, 2011, from State of Washington
Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction :
http://www.k12.wa.us/EnvironmentSustainability/Standards/default.aspx
Overview. (2009, November). Retrieved October 17, 2011, from United States Department of Education:
http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/focus/what.html
Parks, S. D. (2005). In S. D. Parks, Leadership Can Be Taught (pp. ( 1-1)- (1-12)). Harvard Business School
Press.
TKI Te Kete Ipurangi. (n.d.). Retrieved October 10, 2011, from instep.net.nz:
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rsus_technical
Walton, S. (n.d.). Director, Teacher Education Programs, The Evergreen State College. Olympia,
Washington, USA.
Zull, J. E. (2002). The Art of Changing the Brain. Sterling, Virginia: Stylus Publishing, LLC.