Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (Suny Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought)

Orr has plenty to say about how the educational system can play a key role in ensuring that future generations better understand how to live in harmony with the earth. For example, on pp. 85-86, he writes, "The failure to develop ecological literacy is a sin of omission and of commission. Not only are we failing to teach the basics about the earth and how it works, but we are in fact teaching a large amount of stuff that is simply wrong. By failing to include ecological perspectives in any number of subjects, students are taught that ecology is unimportant for history, politics, economics, society and so forth. And through television, they learn that the earth is theirs for the taking. The result is a generation of ecological yahoos without a clue why the color of the water in their rivers is related to their food supply, or why storms are becoming more severe as the planet warms. The same persons as adults will create businesses, vote, have families, and above all, consume. Orr's book is a wake-up call to educators worldwide. It is a lesson on the value of integrative teaching strategies. His underlying message: Don't be an ecological yahoo.

David Orr has approached the subject of "Environmental Literacy" from a series of diverse perspectives. As a Professor of Environmental Studies at Oberlin College, and founder of the Non-Profit Meadowcreek Peoject, he has made a significant and thought-provoking contribution to the field of Contemporary Ecological LIterature. Orr sees "Sustainability," as being "about the terms and conditions of human survival," and that "this crisis can not be solved by the same kind of education that helped to create the problems." The Author feels that the contemporary social problem of Alienation from the Natural world has reached a level which is unprecidented in Human History, and that our success in healing this "division" will be the difference between extinction or survival of the Human Race. This book represents a an in-depth contribution to the growing field of Neo-Ecological Literature. Althought it is wtitten in an academic format, the concepts are clearly defincd, and written in an interesting readable style. This is a basic "Must Read" for anyone seriously interested in becoming "Ecologically Literate."

Let me state up front that this book presents some good ideas. But Orr doesn't have a good grasp on the reality of our social/political dynamics. Orr envisions a top-down reform process wherein colleges will supply students the necessary education to spark reform. Learning about sustainability in college is better than not learning it at all, but the college model has been tried for a few generations now with minimal effectiveness.Also, Orr argues for "an uncompromising commitment to life and its preservation," but he doesn't clearly explain what that means. He also suggests integrating environmental education into a diverse number of courses. While he doesn't suggest mandating environmental courses, I suspect that this would be the end result, since students must still fulfill the requirements of their major. The end result would probably look like the consequences of mandating women's' studies classes that some colleges tried back in the 80's. In other words, you'd get a strong backlash. Also, Orr never addresses the fact that people who live "close to the soil" tend to vote against environmental causes. There's a lot of reason why that is, but for a book that advocates living "close to the soil," it's a huge omission.

Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (Albany: State University of New York Press, c. 1992), by David W. Orr, challenges us to re-think and re-orient our educational endeavors with a singular focus: to save the earth. The volume is one in the "SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought," which explores the possibility, in the words of its editor, David Ray Griffin, that modernity is an "aberration," that "the continuation of modernity threa¬tens the very survival of life on our planet" (p. vi). Given modernity's misguidance, we need to find wiser guides than those which have structured to¬day's technological society. Unlike the "deconstructive postmodernists" who've attracted considerable media attention, however, "constructive postmodernism" seeks to "salvage a positive meaning not only for the notions of the human self, his¬torical meaning, and truth as correspondence, which were central to modernity, but also for premodern notions of a divine reality, cosmic meaning, and an enchanted nature" (p. v). Orr, director of the environmental studies program at Oberlin College, first deals with "the issue of sustainability," arguing we live on a finite planet which needs careful husbandry. Data detailing environmental degradation should chill us: daily we spew aloft 15,000,000 tons of carbon, wipe out 115 square miles of tropi¬cal rain¬forest, desertify 72 square miles of land, drive to extinc¬tion 40-100 species, erode 71,000,000 tons of top¬soil, shoot 2700 tons of CFCs into the stratosphere, and add another 263,000 persons to the world's population. The earth simply can't long endure modernity's technologi¬cal society. Yet the critical nature of the environmental crisis isn't really technical. "Above all else it is a crisis of spirit and spiritual resources" (p. 4). The makers of modernity have so successfully preached a gospel of endless Progress and Prosperity, of economic growth and material affluence, that many of us take for granted their self-evident goodness. Whatever promotes human progress and prosperity must be good! That such progress and prosperity have been purchased by devouring na¬ture's resources rarely troubles their defenders, who, like Julian Simon, argue natural resources "'are not finite in any economic sense'" (p. 8). Not so, argues Orr, who champions "sustainability" instead of growth. Rather than equat¬ing social "good" with economic growth (the sa¬cred GNP), sustainability ought to define the "good." According to the oft-quoted words of Aldo Leopold, "A thing is right when it tends to pre¬erve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends other¬wise." If one accepts sustainability as the goal, the next question naturally focuses on the means to that end. What kinds of things ought we do? To answer that question Orr eliminates some options: 1) trying (through "midwifery" strategies) to alter some aspects of society; 2) relying on self-interest driven free enterprise markets; or 3) influencing political establishments. He espouses a fourth option: an education which persuasively articulates ecologically-rooted ethi¬cal values, which he discusses in several chapters, the most interesting and challenging section in my opinion. Here he focuses on ways educators can teach "ecological literacy," by which he means "that quality of mind that seeks out connections. It is the opposite of the specialization and narrowness characteristic of most education" (p. 92). Making students ecologically literate means teach¬ing them to know and care for the earth. Unfortunately, despite the growing environmental crisis, education has generally detached us from the very world which sustains us. Fewer and fewer folks grow up in rural areas, fewer and fewer children touch much more than the remote control button to change TV programs, few of us walk on anything other than concrete sidewalks on our way from the car to the mall. The end result is that we're mentally impoverished as well as insensitive to nature's needs. "'The interior landscape,'" in Barry Lopez's words, "'responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes'" (p. 86). As the great philosopher Alfred North Whitehead observed: "'First-hand knowledge is the ultimate basis of intellectual life. . . . The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity. It is tame because it has never been scared by the facts'" (p. 99). Yet at the very moment we need ecological sensitivity we're educating without any ecological connections. "'The problem'" of conservation education, according to Aldo Leopold, "'is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of whom have forgotten there is such a thing as land'" (p. 141). What we need, especially in the liberal arts colleges, is an education which prepares persons "to live well in a place" (p. 102). Too many professors, too many students, lack roots to any particular place, know nothing about the place where they live or study, and have no affection for it. We need places like Walden, where Thoreau learned to know himself as well as his environment. In the final, brief chapter the second sec¬tion, "Is Environmental Education an Oxymoron?", Orr broods over the perplex¬ing fact that throughout history the only folks who have lived harmoniously with the land, for extended periods of time, were either non-literate tribes or overtly anti-modern religious sects like the Amish. Indeed, the more educated a person is these days the more likely he or she is to accentuate the damage the earth! Yet Orr has hopes, they be, that radically re-styled education might begin to make a difference. This book is well-written, accurate, refreshingly free of cant and clichés, worthy of careful reading and discussion. For us who teach it's particularly perspicacious, since of all folks we're supposed to most aware of larger issues and future prospects, providing our students with necessary skills and prompting them to effective lives.

The writing is opinionated, pompous, and altogether melodramatic. If it hadn't been required reading I wouldn't have made it through.