In a new book, Charles Saylan, co-founder and executive director of the
California-based Ocean Conservation Society, and his co-author pose a
key question: What can the U.S. educational system do to improve
students? understanding of the environment and its importance in their
lives?
The environment is often seen as a political issue and pushed to the
margins of school curricula by administrators and parents, note Saylan
and Daniel Blumstein, a biology professor at the University of
California-Los Angeles, in The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It).
But at its core, the authors contend, environmental responsibility is a
broadly held, nonpartisan value, much like respect for the law. As
such, they believe, it deserves a central place in public education,
with lessons on the environment permeating every student?s day.
Environmentally active citizens, they say, should grasp everything from
an understanding of tipping points to the ?capacity to see intangible
value in things: forests simply for the sake of the forest; the expanse
of wilderness simply because it is alive, primal, and fiercely
beautiful.?
In a
Yale Environment 360 interview with journalist Michelle Nijhuis, Saylan emphasized his conviction that raising awareness is only half the job of environmental education. Students, he said, should be encouraged to tackle environmental problems in their own communities and should learn how the political process works and how they can act at the local, state, and national levels to turn individual beliefs into policy.
Saylan also talked about the frustrations and rewards of his own
experiences as an environmental educator and laid out his vision of what
must be done to fundamentally overhaul environmental education. If
environmental education is to be truly effective in creating responsible
citizens who will help stop human degradation of the environment,
Saylan insists, it must go well beyond platitudes and the occasional
class trip.
Yale Environment 360: You?ve dedicated your personal life to
marine conservation. What were some of your early experiences with
environmental education?
Charles Saylan: When I was growing up, there wasn?t any formal
environmental education per se ? at that time, we didn?t know we were
messing things up as badly as we are. I grew up in California spending
most of my time outdoors, either climbing or sailing. Nature was where I
wanted to be ? I felt quite at home in the wilderness ? and as I grew
older, I saw those areas where I?d grown up dwindling, and increasingly
being encroached upon. It made me want to do something to protect those
places.
e360: Was there a person or an experience that initially drew you into nature?
Saylan: Not really, but I was fortunate to grow up in a time when
people had a different perception of their kids? safety. When my
friends and I were 12 years old, my parents dropped us off in Yosemite
and left us there for three weeks to walk the John Muir Trail. I can?t
imagine that happening these days. But it was a different time, and the
world seemed a less dangerous place.
e360: Your book has a provocative title: The Failure of Environmental Education. How has it failed?
Saylan: When we talk about failure, we?re being very pragmatic
about it. We believe that environmental education has failed because
it?s not keeping pace with environmental degradation, with human impacts
on the environment. I also think that it?s failed to provoke action. We
have this
Environmental education has failed because it?s not keeping pace with environmental degradation.?
idea that environmental education should provide us with the tools we need to make informed decisions, but I don?t believe we?re making informed decisions as a society commensurate with the pace of our consumption of the environment, our destruction of the environment. So if one looks at environmental education from the standpoint of getting bang for the buck spent, so to speak ? and we think that bang for the buck should be measured in tangible impacts such as reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions ? it?s just not happening.
e360: Was there a moment when you realized that environmental education was failing in this sense?
Saylan: At the Ocean Conservation Society,
we?ve done a lot of environmental outreach. And because we?re located
in an affluent area, in west Los Angeles, we work with a lot of private
schools. We also work with the city of Santa Monica, which is kind of
the poster child for sustainable municipalities. In our book. we talk a
lot about public education and how the standards on which public
education is based don?t include environmental education. In private
schools, especially these private schools, there?s a heavy emphasis on
environmental education, and it?s a significant and strong part of the
curriculum. And we didn?t see a lot of motivation in these kids. They
knew the material and said what was expected of them, but we didn?t
really see a change in behavior or a willingness to give something up
for the benefit of the environment. Environmental education, typically,
is based on this idea that if we make people aware, they?ll do the right
thing. We were working with a highly aware community that wasn?t doing
the right thing. I started to question whether awareness translates to
action at all.
e360: So what was missing?
Saylan: Well, a lot of things, I think. In the book, we say
clearly that we don?t have all the answers, that we don?t know the exact
steps required for change, especially because the problems are
different in every location and venue. But I think the biggest thing
that?s lacking is relevance. I don?t think that environmental education
as it?s currently taught directly affects the lives of the students
we?re teaching.
At the Ocean Conservation Society, we did some environmental
presentations on marine conservation at inner city schools. I went to a
school in east L.A. where you had to go through metal detectors to get
in, where the playground was filled with trash. And I felt very
hypocritical giving a presentation to these kids, most of whom had never
seen the ocean.
The affluent kids are oversaturated ? they can quote Aldo Leopold, but it?s just academic to them.?
Why should they care? I don?t think environmental education asks that often enough. So we initiated a cleanup program on the water. We partnered with a local kayak manufacturer and took these kids out on the water, which was engaging and exciting for them ? most of them had never been on water, much less paddled in a kayak. We trained individual teachers and parents in the use of the equipment and then gave them open access ? they could bring their students whenever they wanted. At the same time, we provided open access to other programs that offered hands-on experience ? whale watching, marine-mammal rehabilitation ? things that kids could get interested in and then take part in as much as they liked.
e360: Did you see those kids engage?
Saylan: We had kids coming back weekly, not only because we were
giving them a good time, but also because they were pulling trash out of
the water, and they couldn?t ignore the mountain of junk that was
coming out. That was a real object lesson.
In that program we worked with a lot of different schools, both inner
city and highly privileged schools. We saw a lot of growth in motivation
in the students, but interestingly, while most of the inner city
schools continued the program, the affluent schools, for the most part,
abandoned it. The affluent kids are oversaturated ? they can quote Aldo
Leopold, they know this stuff, but it?s just academic to them.
e360: Another reason given for the failure of environmental education is the politicization of environmentalism in general.
Saylan: Somewhere along the line, the environmental movement
became synonymous with the hippie counterculture ? in the media?s
portrayal of it, and in some cases in environmentalists? portrayal of
themselves. As our world became more polarized, and as professional
organizations began to manufacture doubt about science in the public
mind, I think that association was increasingly used to politicize and
marginalize environmentalism and environmental protection. Nowadays,
environmentalism is often seen as simply an encroachment on the free
market. That?s completely wrong ? wrong in the sense that
environmentalism is a responsibility of being alive, of our need to
drink water and eat food. It?s an individual and collective
responsibility, whether we acknowledge it or like it or not.
e360: You say that the term ?environmentalism? should be abandoned. What should it be called instead?
Saylan: Responsible citizenship.
e360: What are some of the first concrete steps that parents and teachers might take toward improving environmental education?
Saylan: It?s easy to theorize ? of course, the toughest thing is
implementation. I think top-down reforms are necessary for change, but
Students need to learn what moral systems are so that they understand what makes a good society.?
I?m not sure that we?ll be able to develop and put them in place in time to mitigate environmental degradation. I do think that locally and individually, parents and teachers can help. I hear kids in grocery stores telling their parents not to buy this or that product because of its environmental impacts ? and I think those lessons come from individual teachers, because that?s not an institutional approach. We don?t teach externalities.
e360: I think many classroom teachers would say that they?re
already overwhelmed by trying to keep kids in school, preparing them for
standardized tests, and teaching them essential skills. How can they
fit environmental education into an already crowded school day?
Saylan: Teachers are underpaid and undersupported, and they?re
asked to do a very difficult, even impossible job. But I know at least
20 teachers I?ve worked with in the past 10 years whose classes are more
motivated than the average, and who are themselves more motivated. They
find a way to teach the importance of social engagement, and to insert
some relevance for their students into the material they?re required to
teach. I think we need to identify who those people are and support them
as much as possible.
e360: How specifically have teachers managed to teach these values in the classroom?
Saylan: We?ve worked with Animo Leadership High School, which is a
Los Angeles magnet school run by the teachers? union. Its curriculum is
full of community action and engagement ? the kids go out in the
community and set up gardens, or help people save energy and money by
insulating their houses. They pick their own projects and stay with them
from inception to completion, over the course of several semesters if
not through their entire stay at the school. The kids are highly
motivated, highly engaged in the community, and highly successful in the
No Child Left Behind sense ? the vast majority go to college.
The teachers and administrators at that school are also unusually
motivated ? they don?t let the system beat them down, which the system
tends to do.
e360: You?ve emphasized that it?s impossible to write a general
prescription for reform. But if the LA Unified School District were to
adopt your suggestions, what might a typical high schooler?s day look
like?
Saylan: Well, it might not look that different than it does
today, but the content might change. I would hope that some part of it
would be spent outside. I would hope that students would get involved in
changing their schools ? physically changing the buildings ? to make
them more sustainable and more appealing to them, places where they
wanted to spend time. Again, I think educational projects that involved
community action would be a good thing. School gardens have proven to be
a good idea on a lot of different levels ? they have very direct,
practical teaching potential.
I also think that schools should restore some of the programs they?ve
begun to give up, like literature, poetry, and aesthetics. I think
students need to get beyond this intense focus we have now on economic
performance, and learn why we need to perform economically, why our
society is the way it is. They need to learn about moral systems ? they
shouldn?t be taught a particular system of morality, but they need to
learn what moral systems are so that they understand what makes a good
society.
e360: Speaking broadly, beyond the three R?s, what do you think every graduating senior in the United States should know?
Saylan: They need to be scientifically literate ? it?s hard for
people to understand climate science if they?re not scientifically
literate. They need to read about and understand the political process,
and understand why discourse and compromise is important to that. If the
public education system were to provide those kinds of skills ? John
Dewey types of skills ? we?d have a healthier society. We?d all be more
likely to sacrifice for the greater good, which is what we?ll need to do
if we?re going to mitigate some the environmental problems that we
have, and that are coming down the line.
?
e360: We?ve talked a lot about the problems with environmental
education. Do you have a favorite moment from your own teaching
experience where you saw environmental education really work in the way
you envision it working?
Saylan: The Ocean Conservation Society had a mentorship program
in which we helped groups of middle-school students develop their own
plans for environmental outreach or action. One group decided to give a
presentation to the Culver City council in support of a ban on plastic
bags. We coached the students, but they approached the city council and
did the presentation on their own, and they were phenomenal. It was
truly democratic action.
e360: And did the bag ban pass?
Saylan: Nope. But they learned how to find the right audience for
their ideas and to make their voices heard. And they learned that if
they didn?t succeed, they needed to go at it again.?
Original Article on Yale Environment 360
Source: http://www.solarfeeds.com/yale-environment-360/17020-the-problem-with-environmental-education
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Ever since my first TechCrunch meetup in Berlin in 2008 and 2009 I?ve been keeping a watchful eye on this city as I travelled around Europe covering startups and explaining the scene to anyone who would listen. But since then it?s quite clear that a couple of things have happened. The whole European scene has improved massively. There are now startup events, activity and fundraising across Europe in an ongoing manner. Sure, it?s not Silicon Valley (I?m sorry, but who cares?) ? in fact we should really be comparing ourselves to our own progress, not to other places. And the news is good. The ?Valley Virus? has spread, and Europe is now starting to boast some amazing startups.
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