Environmental Education and Contemporary Challenges

Bob Jickling
Editor, Canadian Journal of Environmental Education
Lakehead University, 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada  P7B 5E1 bob.jickling@lakeheadu.ca

Paper presented at the Second World Environmental Education Congress
Rio de Janeiro, September 16-18, 2004

At the First World Environmental Education Congress there was a presentation titled “modernizing environmental education.”  I have been thinking about this since.  What would it mean if we were to take this challenge seriously and modernize environmental education—or better reimagine environmental education in light of contemporary challenges.

What would that look like, if we were to dig a little deeper?  What if we were to depart from past trends that have led to devising evermore adjective driven educations?  What if we stopped looking for replacements for environmental education in terms like “sustainable development,” and “sustainability”? What then?

Consider, why have we have created so many educations: nature education, outdoor education, environmental education, experiential education, global education and development education along with so many others?  What educational priorities are these slogans directing us to think about?  Are there some commonalities amongst them?

I am reminded of E. F. Schumacher (1977) who asked similar questions many years ago:

All through school and university I had been given maps of life and knowledge on which there was hardly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and that seemed to me to be of the greatest possible importance to the conduct of my life.  I remembered that for many years my perplexity had been complete; and no interpreter had come along to help me.  It remained complete until I ceased to suspect the sanity of my perceptions and began, instead, to suspect the soundness of the maps. (p. 1)

I suspect these words resonate with many of you. 

Framed this way, we might think about re-imagining environmental education—and many of the other educations—as a journey into blank spots on curricular maps of schools, university, and life. 

But, what ways of knowing are missing?  What is it that we care about that is absent?  And what is important in the conduct of not just a sustainable life, but a good life?

If we shift our emphasis to thinking about how to live well in a place, then we can begin to look at contemporary challenges in new ways.  When we do, we find one thing that the various “educations” share. They are all protesting the status quo; they are all protests on behalf of values.

Talk about status quo is ubiquitous; we all complain about the status quo, but what force drives it?  What authority serves to maintain social conventions and values?  I like what Canadian environmental philosopher Neil Evernden (1985) has to say.  He suggests that the real authorities in a culture are unquestioned assumptions. 

Our guiding and stabilizing authorities are the values that are buried so deeply in our belief systems and lifestyles as to be transparent—unrecognizable on a daily basis.  Any real change will require disrupting these assumptions.  What we really seem to want—or need—is to put the “status quo” up for debate.

Of course, this is easier said than done.  But for starters let’s remember that vibrant civic conversation depends criticism and non-conformism.  In the absence of these qualities there is nothing to prevent us from drifting towards social conformity and uncritical acceptance of the status quo and the ideologies upon which it rests (John Ralston Saul, 1995).

Good education is about creating the ability to engage in a serious conversation about social values and ultimately to transcend social norms.  When thinking about environmental educational programs we can ask, do the activities and content disrupt the status quo or reinforce it?

Now we are getting somewhere, educationally speaking.  We seem to be locating some of those blank spots on Shumacher’s curricular maps. But what are some of the challenges that we face in opening up these spaces?  Here I offer several starting points in answer to this question (see also, Jickling, 2004).

The first challenge: Consider the prestige of science

One way of looking at this issue is through the eyes of ecologists working on behalf of threatened and endangered species.  A scientist recently shared her frustrations that while she, and her colleagues, can show that animals and their habitats are threatened, nothing happens. 

Yet, in some ways this isn’t a surprise. Science can work towards explaining how phenomena occur, and based on this knowledge can make predictions about what might happen. But, knowing a species is becoming extinct, does not necessarily lead us to a conclusion that we ought to do any thing about it.

Canadian, Robert Bringhurst (1995), expresses the same thing poetically in his “Conversations with a toad”:

My people have named a million species of insects.
They tell me that millions more are unnamed —
tens of millions among the living
and hundreds of millions among the dead

It is good news, toad: that no one can list
what exists in the world.  But not good enough.
Named or unnamed, if it lives, we can kill it. (p. 22)

What Bringhurst so brilliantly reveals is how our typical inquiries are full of science yet lack attention to the a priori question, “Why should we care?”

Critique of science is not new. It has been amply discussed in environmental and philosophical literature, and there are new models of science. Yet, public faith in the resulting instrumental rationality has never been shaken (Evernden, 1985).  Perhaps it is time to do more.  Perhaps it is time to claim the space opened up by the critical work—to create conditions for ethical thinking to emerge.

A first step would be to recognize that normal science is the enactment of a story; it isn’t “objective” and it isn’t value free. We all know that different stories can be told about the same events.  What is often presented to us is also shaped by the assumptions and the values of the managers and scientists that gather and present the information.  And too often it is a story that will do nothing to challenge industrial societies’ drive for ever-more-effective domination of nature and use of its “resources”

Even in science, ethics comes first—whether we like it or not. How we approach the world will determined by our values and these values will in turn determine what we come to know. And more troubling is the idea that we become who we are through what we know

If we are content to train a society that is expert in its ability to dig up, chop down, and shoot dead the world around it, then that is how public discussion will be framed, and that is what society will do.

Surely it is time to enact a different story

The second challenge: To talk about ethics

Everyone operates from within value systems, or stories, and ethical thinking enables individuals and groups to examine these systems and stories.  In this sense ethical thinking is about involving people in a process of exploration and understanding values and how they affect lifestyle choices and the political decisions we make.  Our question, as educators, is how do we encourage this—help to make it happen?

One of the fears is that “if you let ethics off the rational leash, it will turn into ideology.” (Saul, 2001, p. 86). This is not without justification.  For some teaching ethics kindles unpleasant memories of being subjected to doctrinaire practices and preaching—in both religious and secular contexts.  For these folks there is a fear that somebody else’s values will be imposed on their children—perhaps “crammed down their throats.” 

A first step in rehabilitating ethics in the minds of sceptics is to be clear that this term is used in more that one way.  In some cases we refer to it as a code of practice.  Many professionals are, for example, expected to adhere to the ethical codes of their governing bodies. A code of “professional ethics” is a form of recommended guidelines that has been formulated by a subgroup within a society as a way of its controlling members.

Fortunately, ethics is also used in another way—as a process of inquiry—a philosophical examination of those varied and sometimes contested stories that constitute our social reality. This is quite different from following prescribed rules or an ideologue. Rather, “ethics as process” invites individuals into an ongoing process of defining and redefining their own rules for individual and community conduct.  Ethics in this sense is an everyday activity for ordinary people. And, it is the essence of citizen-based democracy.

Seen this way, ethics is an open-ended process with the potential to expose new challenges and generate new possibilities. And, it is a continuous and evolving process. This doesn’t mean that decisions and actions are never taken. It does mean that ethical positions are always open for discussion, reexamination, and revision.

Perhaps to start ethical discussions we can best ask philosophical questions: What should we do in this case ? And, why? What would be a good way to live? What would good relationships between people and societies look like? What about good relationships between people and animals?  Ecosystems? And, are we even the most important species?

The point here isn’t to lead people to “right” answers. Rather it is to engage them in the discussion.  Awaken their consciousness and give them back their voice.

The third challenge: Feelings and rationality

When we talk about values, ethics, and politics we cannot be simply objective; there is always a more subjective and emotional component.  For those of you that recoil at this thought, I suggest that the very act of recoiling is an emotional response.  To attend to these emotional dimensions of our lives is to be human. 

Yet, do we make room in our curricula for emotional understanding, for nurturing care and feelings?  Does emotional understanding figure in standardized testing?  Can it?  Is there sufficient breadth in the knowledge systems that underpin our curricula? 

The venerable Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess (2002, p. 51) points towards an answer to some of these questions when he said:

The rationality that characterizes the knowledge society is of an extremely limited kind—a petty rationality—that does not ask what are our most fundamental priorities and values as human beings.  This rationality has lost sight of our aims and is merely concerned with means.  Is the conflict between emotion and rationality real?  And is it not often imagination and emotion that drives scientists and scholars?

It is this petty rationality that we are left with when we allow educational programming to skirt questions of values, ethics, politics, and feelings. 

Put another way, Aldo Leopold (1966, p. 261) said:

It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to the land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land and a high regard for its value.  By value, I of course mean something far broader than mere economic value; I mean value in the philosophical sense.

For Naess and Leopold, ethics is largely about what warrants our care and consideration, and how we should behave towards those entities that demand this care. 

In the end we care about the things we love.  And lovers can see and know things that others cannot.  “Love is in fact a way of knowing, but its dynamics are the reverse of the usual models.  Love comes first, and opens up possibilities” (Cheney and Weston 1999, p. 118; see also Weston, 2004). Declaring what you care about is not “soft,” it is honest.

If we are to take the advice of Leopold and Naess seriously, then education will be found at the edge between past practices and future possibilities.  It will be looking beyond the status quo, social conventions, and petty rationality.  But can we create learning opportunities that take us to this edge in ways that are educational?  What would this look like?  In what follows, I will lay out a few tentative guideposts that may assist educators in sketching the interiors of their curricular maps.

A few guideposts

Going forward towards new possibilities for environmental education is messy; education is itself a messy business. But, we have to act; we have to create learning opportunities. Each person must do some of the hard work for him or herself.  However, these tentative guideposts are offered; perhaps some will be useful (see also Jickling, 2003).

Tell stories

 Life is a story and it is shaped by countless other stories.  Even science is a story played out within a set of assumptions, within other ways of understanding. It is not objectively aloof and disinterested in the world (Thomas Kuhn, 1970).
 
 As educators, we can enable students to explore those assumptions by asking: “What kinds of questions are being asked?” “Why?” and “How do the scientists seem to be approaching the world—as an object for experimentation, or as a subject of respect?”  And, does this science help us to live a better—more just, equitable, and respectful—life.  Answering these kinds of questions can enable us to be more conscious of the stories that we hear, and the stories that we need to hear.
 
 We can also seek alternative stories to tell. There are many; look for them.  Seek them in your community and from outside, and tell them as if they were mirrors that help you and your students look back on yourselves, your values, and your own culture. But also make room for those stories being told by the social critics and non-conformists—the so-called “radicals.” They are the ones working outside the status quo.

Embrace ambiguity

When pursuing difficult questions about “a good life” and “living well”, there isn’t a right answer and there is always uncertainty.  There is also uncertainty when we tackle contentious issues, and this leads to ambiguities.  But, ambiguity should not paralyze or confuse; rather, it should invite tentativeness.  It acknowledges multiple realities and multiple truths and it also allows you to be uncertain, or even wrong.  It gives everyone room to move and to explore new possibilities.

Ambiguity should create intellectual and practical space for creativity, developing new ideas, new emotions, and stretching our ways of thinking and being.  Ambiguity should create space to move beyond just sustainable development—to allow room to seriously consider Gaianists, followers of the Deep Ecology movement, bioregional practitioners, ecofeminists, and the yet to be expressed formulations of ecological being.

Perform well

What you do counts; both education and ethics have performative dimensions.  It is more difficult, for example, to develop competency in democratic principles if you run authoritarian classes.  It just doesn’t work well when educator’s work against themselves by espousing one set of values yet undermine them with their actions. 

Similarly, it is difficult to imagine an educational setting that is respectful of all life forms where students never see, touch, smell, or listen to other beings, or worse, settings where dissections are their only contact with other organisms.  All of those hundreds of little activities that comprise the daily life of an educator also comprise an implicit curriculum that is loaded with values (Eisner 1985).

Be a citizen too

Educators should continue to have an active role in the affairs of their community.  In fact, to do otherwise can carry the message that citizen participation is not important, that citizens cannot make a difference.  At an increasingly cynical juncture in our history, students find it evermore important to see mentors “walking their talk.”  However, it is important to know when our actions, and influence, get in the way.  Students can be impressionable and coercion, however subtle or unintended, is not educational.  They respect your involvement and your courage to take a stance on an issue, but they also want room to make their own judgments.

Value controversy

Issues can be complex and messy, but get involved anyway.  A vibrant democracy depends on this participation, which is the very expression of discomfort and controversy.  This is how we enact social critique and how we reveal assumptions and introduce new ideas (Thomashow 1989, Clarke 1992/3).

There are many ways to become involved.  As a citizen, we may take part in a political forum and encourage our citizens to do the same.  As educators, we may seek to reveal missing pieces, or silences, or unquestioned assumptions.  However, careful preparation is required; success and failure can be separated by a heartbeat.  The greater the controversy the greater the need to present clear, explicit, and defensible educational theory and pedagogy.  Here there is nothing more practical than good theory (Egan, 1996).

Nurture feelings and care

Feelings are important, yet are often blank spaces on our curricular maps.  As Leopold said:  “We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in” (1966, p. 251). We need to pay attention to this.

Also, as Arne Naess says: “There is an underestimation of the cognitive values of feelings” (2000, p. 53). We should allow space in our instructional programs to ask: “How do you feel?” “What do you feel?” Then, “What should you feel?” “What do you think you are right to feel?” and “What do you want yourself to feel?” (Naess 2000, p. 56).

Or, we could say that, “moral reasoning requires some version of empathy, putting ourselves in the other’s place, seeing the world to some degree from the perspective of the other with needs and experiences both similar to and different from our own” (Val Plumwood’s (1999, p. 75).

Building our ethical understanding will, therefore, be linked to our ability to develop emotional understanding. It is here that care and respect are grounded. This requires real contact with other people, social groups, societies, and more-than-human living beings.  It requires contact with the land.  The community and the earth become the textbook.

Finally, be courageous

Good education that can enable change, that can transcend the status quo, requires risk.  Take some chances.  Some of the best education will take place on the edge between present realities and future possibilities. Good teachers will make some mistakes and will, from time to time, have to pull back.  However they will also be redrawing the pedagogical and theoretical maps.  Good Luck!

References

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