Record: 1
Title: Reconceptualizing environmental education: Five possibilities.
Author(s): Corcoran, Peter B.
Sievers, Eric
Source:
Journal of Environmental Education; Summer94, Vol. 25 Issue
4, p4, 5p
Document Type: Article
Subject(s): ENVIRONMENTAL education
ECOLOGY -- Philosophy
CONSERVATION biology
Abstract: Describes several emerging philosophies including deep
ecology and examine their potential contribution to environmental
education. Fundamental compatibility between conservation biology and
environmental education; Effects of bioregionalism to environmental
education; Characteristics of effective environmental education;
Understanding the concept of ecofeminism that transcend the parent
ideologies of environmentalism and feminism; Conclusions.
Full Text Word Count: 3523
ISSN: 00958964
Accession Number:
9708122317
Persistent Link to this Article:
http://search.epnet.com/direct.asp?an=9708122317&db=afh
Cut and Paste: <A
href="http://search.epnet.com/direct.asp?an=9708122317&db=afh">Recon
ceptualizing environmental education: Five possibilities.</A>
Database: Academic Search Elite
-----------------------------------------------------------------------Section: VIEWPOINT
RECONCEPTUALIZING ENVIRONMENTAL
EDUCATION: FIVE POSSIBILITIES
Contents
Deep Ecology
Conservation Biology
Bioregionalism
Ecofeminism
Socially Critical Analysis
Conclusion
REFERENCES
The chilling rain fell heavily in Crum Creek Meadow, where our class
gathered; however, each time John Seed asked, no one wanted to move
inside. We began with exercises designed to bring us closer to each other,
to marvel at the capacities latent in each of us. Rolling and slithering on the
ground, we acted out the wondrous evolutionary journey life has taken in
the past few billion years. Then we each took a moment to speak for the
suffering, love, and place of a particular creature in this Council of All
Beings. The mingling of teardrops with raindrops was especially cathartic
as we grieved for the loss of life on our planet. The rain brought a special
magic to this session of Education 65: Environmental Education at
Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Thomas Berry has written, "There
must be a mystique of the rain if we are to restore the purity of the rainfall"
(1988,p. 21). This intense and moving class provided an opportunity to
explore and overcome the frustration of powerlessness that often
accompanies environmental concern and to imagine and implement
strategies for action to restore the purity of the rainfall.
In this article we describe several emerging philosophies, including deep
ecology, which inspired the Council of All Beings, and examine their
potential contribution to environmental education. We define, critically
analyze, and illustrate each theory with examples from our struggle to
apply them at Swarthmore. The course's aim was to explore the
philosophical and methodological power of environmental education to
solve problems, both environmental and educational. We embedded these
philosophies in our course work because of the hopeful possibilities they
offered us.
We believe that North American environmental education has not
embraced several philosophical perspectives that have enormous potential
for strengthening theory and improving practice: deep ecology,
conservation biology, bioregionalism, ecofeminism, and socially critical
analysis. Our position is not simply that these ideas are better or more
interesting but that, as philosophies, they offer hope of guiding
environmental education in appropriate new directions. The field needs
new intellectual, emotional, and spiritual energy to keep pace with the
devastating urgency of environmental problems. Environmental
education's task has never been more demanding; it is essential for us to
reach new audiences, to broaden the definition of who is an environmental
educator, and to create methods more powerful in their ability to effect
change. Our hope is that environmental educators will explore these ideas
and move consideration of their importance forward.
Deep Ecology
Deep ecology promotes a biocentric approach to life, placing all life at the
center of meaning. It strives to view humans as integral parts of all creation
but not ontologically more valuable than other life forms. This belief is
developed in Christopher Manes's Green Rage (1990):
But in the vast web of life there is no first or second, higher or lower,
superior and inferior. All life has made the same journey of organic
evolution. Over billions of years, and those that survive, whether worm or
human, are equal), if differently, evolved. Survival is the only index of
development in evolutionary theory, not brain size or consciousness, so
that every one of the millions of species that dwell on this planet is as
evolved as Homo Sapiens. (p. 161)
Coined by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1973 in a paper entitled
"The Shallow and the Deep: Long-Range Ecology Movements," this
philosophy recognizes all natural processes as inherently and ineluctably
valuable. Many authors, including U.S. Vice President Al Gore in Earth in
the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (1992) have portrayed deep
ecology as antihuman. In our opinion, deep ecology is no more antihuman
than the Buddhist influence central to its development; it would be more
appropriate to say that it does not cater to the conventional Western idea
of a privileged humanity with a birthright of dominion. Because many
human activities destroy life and devastate natural systems, deep ecology
criticizes human society--at times, in the spirit of John Muir, "taking the
side of the bears."
A number of deep ecologists engage in civil disobedience to protect the
biological integrity of the earth. We believe that such actions can play a
profound educational role. Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of
All Beings (Seed et al., 1988) examines how personal action can broaden
one's understanding of environmental issues, even clarifying one's
participation in society as an emerging vehicle for affirmative change. A
further exploration of political action as environmental education is found in
Deep Ecology, by Bill Devall and George Sessions (1985).
We convened our Council of All Beings in the third week of environmental
education class at Swarthmore and were rewarded with a deep, uniting,
and forceful experience that matured into an open, trusting, and energized
group dynamic lasting the rest of the semester. Students repeatedly
pointed to emotional and conceptual breakthroughs, facilitated by their
experiences, as integral to their emerging understandings of the
environmental crisis and the promise and potential of environmental
education.
Deep ecology also provides a rich counterpoint to the modern sense of
place and epistemology. From the student's perspective, it highlights the
difference between observing nature as a detached spectator and
interacting as part of nature's dynamic community. In addition, deep
ecology provides an important bridge to modern biological thought. It
weaves present scientific theories of evolutionary biology and ecological
relationships into a meaningful and engaging cosmology.
Instead of refuting scientific knowledge, deep ecology confronts the
mechanistic scientific paradigm that allows life's annihilation concurrent to
and often as a corollary of its exploration. In this endeavor, and through
recognizing the beauty of unfolding a comprehensive Earth story, deep
ecology aligns itself to currents of conservation biology.
Conservation Biology
Field biologists, particularly those working in areas of high rates of
extinction exacerbated by anthropogenic activity, began to refer to
themselves in the 1970s as conservation biologists. Their desire to arrest
destructive activity, preserve biological diversity, and develop a
responsible and effective approach to biotic conservation gave rise to this
new field. Conservation biology, in much the same fashion as
environmental education, has long been identifiable in practice, whereas
the term itself has not come into use until recently. Several international
conferences on conservation biology, some outstanding texts, and the
founding of the Society for Conservation Biology and its attendant
excellent publications cemented the presence of conservation biology in
the 1980s and encouraged an energetic dialogue in the field. Moreover,
the field's wide-ranging search for solutions has extended to areas
traditionally in the domain of the social sciences. All this and the increasing
urgency of the ecological crisis have brought conservation biology into a
prominent, promising, and influential scientific position in the nineties.
From the standpoint of an environmental educator, conservation biology is
particularly remarkable for its
rapid growth;
eloquence, energy, and implications;
discussion of the relevance of political and social spheres to the
development of successful conservation strategies;
discussion of the relevance of personal feelings on the part of conservation
biologists; and
discussion of the importance of environmental education.
There is a fundamental compatibility between conservation biology and
environmental education. Conservation biologists have embraced a notion
uncomfortable to the scientific community since Francis Bacon's time,
namely, the explicit statement of a value judgment--a criticism of human
activities on specific environments. There is an admission of desire for the
modification of these activities because of the intrinsic value of biological
diversity. Many conservation biologists see education's integral role in this
process and follow the lead of Aldo Leopold, one of conservation biology's
patron saints, in consistently advocating the need for more and better
conservator education. Michael Soule commented:
Dealing with emotionally and ethically complex material often requires
courage. It is natural to back away from "nonscientific" or "messy" matters,
leaving such issues to journalists, ethics committees, popularists, and
"nature lovers." For example, there are probably conservation biologists
who would be reluctant to lecture their students on how to love nature....
This is rubbish. Everyone knows that ardor and enthusiasm are inspiring,
and that love of subject matter is infectious. (1986,p. 5)
Students of our environmental education class organized a symposium
entitled "Conservation Biology and Neotropical Migratory Songbird
Preservation," and we were able to see the broad possibilities for
environmental education in a closer connection to conservation biology.
Conservation biology has tremendous potential to inform the practice and v
vocabulary of environmental education. Conservation biology endeavors to
reveal ecology as an indispensable story. Environmental educators can
learn and tell the stories of neotropical butterfly migrations, bat life history,
songbird brood parasitism, and logging's effects on forest health, not as
dessicated scientific facts but as components of the vibrant rush of the real
earth story.
Conservation biology also offers environmental educators a palpable and
solid basis for expressing the interrelatedness of the natural world. Many
conservation biologists are developing a macroscopic scientific view of
nature. They not only are examining how ecosystems function and how
each organism or element fits into the mosaic of life, but they also are
acknowledging the social and economic contexts of this information.
Because of conservation biology's interest in and affirmation of
environmental education, closer ties between environmental educators and
conservation biologists should be forged. We hope that environmental
educators will initiate these contacts.
Bioregionalism
Bioregionalist thinking draws attention to immediate physical and cultural
environments, to the riches and limitations of any given place. It guides us
to acknowledge and live by the capacities of natural systems of which we
are a part. In a section of Home! A Bioregional Reader entitled "What is
Bioregionalism?" the editors explained:
Bioregionalism calls for human society to be more closely related to nature
(hence, bio), and to be more conscious of its locale, or region, of life-place
(therefore, region). For humans who exhibit the most extreme alienation
from nature imaginable, and who--in North America especially--are
uniquely unattached to particular places, bioregionalism is essentially a
recognition that, today, we flounder without an adequate overall philosophy
of life to guide our action toward a sane alternative. It is a proposal to
ground human cultures within natural systems, to get to know one's place
intimately in order to fit human communities to the Earth, not distort the
Earth to our demands. (Andruss, et al., 1990, p. 2)
Regrasping interdependence and reinvolving the spirit of reverence for
place creates conditions in which education can look back to cultures that
lived in harmony with places in the past, and can look forward to the
hopeful possibility that we will learn to live, as we must, in harmony within
the natural systems upon which we depend. Any discussion of North
American bioregionalism must credit Native Americans as inspiration for
living fully and well within the limits of a place. Correspondingly, any
bioregional education would be greatly informed by contemporary views of
the Native Americans of any particular bioregion.
Much in the tradition of nature study and environmental education confirms
the ties of the individual and the community to place. The study of natural
history and nature appreciation in the spirit of Rachel Carson creates the
sense of place (and "sense of wonder") necessary to the connectedness
that underscores a bioregional perspective. Environmental studies of the
natural and human-made systems of which students are a part provide
essential knowledge and understanding of that place. Bioregionalism
invites us to go further. Gary Snyder wrote:
Bioregional awareness touches us in specific ways. It is not enough to just
"love nature" or to want to "be in harmony with Gaia." Our relation to the
natural world takes place in a place, and it must be grounded in
information and experience. (Andruss et al., 1990, p. 18)
Bioregionalism brings to environmental education a profound respect for
place, respect for the community in that place, understanding of
interdependence, and help in rejecting anthropocentric and atomistic
education that alienates us from our environment and from each other. In
an insightful afterword to Elements of a Post-Liberal Education entitled
"Implications of Bioregionalism for a Radical Theory of Education," Bowers
captured the significance of bioregionalism for education:
. . . modern interpretations of alienation involve foregrounding the
individual by putting out of focus the background (place or context). For the
bioregionalist both are integral to each other.
Yet there is more to the bioregionalist position that has direct implications
for thinking about the purpose of education, as well as for rethinking
certain prejudices that have long held a privileged position in educational
circles. A knowledge of place and a concern with rootedness is not the
expression of a nostalgic desire to return to the simplicity of a more
primitive past. The bioregionalists are really concerned with the problem of
empowerment. (1987,pp. 163-164)
Swarthmore environmental education students initiated a bioregionally
inspired curriculum at Woodrock, an at-risk youth agency in the Kensington
section of Philadelphia. Looking at the systems underlying neighborhood
life, they had students investigate the source of their drinking water in the
heavily polluted Schuylkill River, the destination of their toilet water, and
the origins of their Snickers bars. In so doing they vivified that which
alienated them; they became more aware by linking their actual
connections with the dynamic cycles of the earth and re-imagined their
place in this context.
Swarthmore faculty and students also organized a seminar on
environmental studies and, after reading David Orr's "The Liberal Arts, the
Campus, and the Biosphere" (1990), created a team-taught,
multidisciplinary, bioregional course called Swarthmore and the Biosphere.
Ecofeminism
Understandings emerge from ecofeminism that transcend the parent
ideologies of environmentalism and feminism, yet there are some
problems for us in approaching this subject. First, we are both men.
Second, there is no common agreement on the definition of ecofeminism.
We will try, however, to convey an appreciation of the scope of
ecofeminism by outlining one of the most misunderstood elements in the
philosophy, namely, ecofeminism's portrayal of the implications of the
feminine.
A central theme of ecofeminism is the interconnection between the abuse
of nature and the oppression of women. Ecofeminism affirms the natural
rhythms of the female body as synchronous to earth rhythms, celebrates
the primal fecundity of the reproductive process, and not only discusses
but celebrates the intuitive capabilities of women. In this context,
ecofeminism is at odds with feminist theory. Ecofeminism rejects efforts to
deny the importance of the sublime consequences and possibilities
connected with the female body. To bring the comparison of feminism and
ecofeminism full circle, these ideologies share a vigorous criticism of male
dominance, violence, and hierarchies.
Because most educational settings, including those in environmental
education, are male-centered, there is urgent importance to exploring
ecofeminism in a classroom setting. Our study of ecofeminism at
Swarthmore facilitated the process of confronting the male dominance that
inhibits the educational experience of many women. Female students were
empowered to form a closely knit group. The members challenged
traditional male thinking and were eloquent in bringing in a profound
understanding of the deeper implications, for nature and society, of our
male-centered culture, and how attending to the rights of women and
responding to the health of nature combine actively at the level of the
individual. Male students were empowered in a different way. Initially.
some were baffled, possibly for the first time in their lives, because the
language, pronoun, and metaphor of an activity were not masculine.
However, as they overcame their initial resistance, they experienced a
social and intellectual maturity outside the realm of normal classroom
discourse, enhancing their listening skills and facilitating their cooperation.
We read works that explored cultures in which the ecofeminist viewpoint
was validated. A particular gift to environmental educators is Ursula
Leguin's Always Coming Home (1978), which explores technology,
sustainability, bioregionalism, self-expression, and ritual from an
ecofeminist perspective. We also read books by women who introduced us
to the importance of socially critical analysis in environmental education.
Socially Critical Analysis
Most North American environmental education accepts the existing social
and economic order as a given. Effective environmental education
employs the skills of social critique to challenge the ideology that
generates environmental problems in a political economy.
John Huckle of Bedford College of Higher Education in the United
Kingdom wrote:
Teachers and pupils rarely examine the structural causes of environmental
problems and social alternatives which could enable sustainable
development. In many lessons, environmental issues are presented as
asocial or universal problems. They are attributed to such problems as
overpopulation, resource scarcity, inappropriate technology,
overproduction, and exploitative values, but these factors are not explored
in a way which relates them to underlying social forces. The relationship
between people and the environment is not taught in a context of
economic, political, and cultural systems, with the result that pupils remain
largely impotent as agents of social and environmental change. (1991,p. 7)
Giovanna Di Chiro, in her masterful piece "Environmental Education and
the Question of Gender: A Feminist Critique," helps us to see the socially
constructed nature of the environmental problem that "renders it amenable
to a social critique" (Robottom, p. 41). She calls for us to be critical of
"those social relations and structures that perpetuate values and ideologies
that sustain social/environmental problems" (p. 41) and invites us to
embrace environmental education that is qualitatively different.
In our course we worked toward socially critical analysis through the
analytic skills students had developed in feminist, deconstructionist,
Marxist, or other theories. We related the problems in environmental
education to the problems in education as revealed by the critical
pedagogy of Paolo Friere and Ira Shor as well as by the arguments of
philosophers of education such as Maxine Greene. Primarily, we read the
lucid and persuasive work of overseas environmental, geography, and
social history educators such as Di Chiro, Huckle, Noel Gough, Annette
Greenall, and Ian Robottom.
We applied this work to two questions: If we chose to expand
environmental education through socially critical analysis, what skills would
be needed by effective environmental educators? Why has environmental
education failed to "problematize" its circumstances?
Applying socially critical analysis is more difficult in precollegiate settings.
Huckle's own curriculum materials published by World Wide Fund for
Nature are exemplary models for raising critical questions about capitalism
with children. Environmental educators always run the risk of proselytizing
or indoctrinating. Most environmental education, however, does not even
acknowledge the social construction of environment or invite challenges to
the ideology that generates environmental problems. Therefore, we believe
that these questions deserve a place in the curriculum.
The problems we addressed in our course led students to become
involved in actions arising from their social concerns. Student responses
ranged from teaching environmental education in urban programs, to
working to improve the personal environmental behavior of the professor
and class members, to writing a curriculum to raise awareness of the
impact of corporate agriculture on migrant workers. Taking action was an
essential aspect of the process of socially critical analysis--and of the
success of the course.
Conclusion
North American environmental education is evolving in the hearts and
hands of practitioners as we expand our audiences, redefine EE concepts
based on our experience, and create new methods. Environmental
educators gain credibility as gathering after international gathering calls for
environmental education. We contend that, to realize its potential,
environmental education needs to be reconceived--expanded by deep
ecology, informed by the perspectives of conservation biology, put in
context through bioregionalism, enriched through ecofeminism, and
critiqued through socially critical analysis.
REFERENCES
Andruss, V., Plant, C., Plant, J., & Wright, E. (1990). Home! A bioregional
reader Philadelphia: New Society Publishers.
Berry, T. (1988). The dream of the earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club
Books.
Bowers, C. A. (1987). Elements of a post liberal education. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Caduto, M. J., & Bruchac, J. (1988). Keepers of the earth: Native A
American stories and environmental activities for children. Golden, CO:
Fulcrum Publishing.
Caduto, M. J., & Bruchac, J. (1988). Teacher's guide to keepers of the
earth. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing.
Devall, B., & Sessions, G. (1985). Deep ecology. Salt Lake City: Peregrine
Smith Books.
Griffin, S. (1978). Woman and nature: The roaring inside her. New York:
Harper and Row.
Huckle, J. (1991). Education for sustainability: Assessing pathways to the
future. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, p. 70
LeGuin, U. K. (1987). Always coming home. New York: Avon.
Manes, C. (1990). Green rage: Radical environmentalism and the
unmaking of civilization. Boston: Little, Brown.
Orr, D. (1990). The liberal arts, the campus, and the biosphere. Harvard
Educational Review, Vol. 60, No. 2.
Robottom, I. (Ed.) (1987). Environmental education: Practice and
possibility. Geelong, Victoria, Australia: Deakin University Press.
Seed, J., Macy, J., Fleming, P., & Naess, A. (Eds.). (1988). Thinking like a
mountain: Towards a council of all beings. Philadelphia: New Society
Publishers.
Soule, M. E. (1986). Conservation biology: The science of scarcity and
diversity. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.
Wild earth. (1992). Canton, NY: Cenozoic Society.
Wilson, E. O. (Ed.). (1990). Biodiversity. Washington, DC: National
Academy Press.
~~~~~~~~
By PETER B. CORCORAN and ERIC SIEVERS
Peter B. Corcoran is choir of the Education Deportment at Bates College in
Maine. Eric Sievers is a consultant for ISAR: A Clearinghouse on
Grassroots Cooperation in Eurasia. He lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright of Journal of Environmental Education is the property of
Heldref Publications and its content may not be copied or emailed to
multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express
written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles
for individual use.
Source: Journal of Environmental Education, Summer94, Vol. 25 Issue 4,
p4, 5p
Item: 9708122317
Top of Page
Back