Inquiry Island - The Prequel: A Critical Ecological Social Studies Experience

Abstract

In addition to the continuing need for citizens who can address the challenges of human communities, growing concerns have arisen regarding all life on the planet. Indeed, one of our most urgent conditions is the decline of the environment upon which all life depends. Yet, despite our concerns, there remain vastly differing views regarding the nature of the challenges, their fundamental causes, and how to address them. Among the reasons for these differing views are widespread misperceptions of the relationships between humans and the environment, and thus between our rapidly deteriorating social and environmental conditions. To correct these misperceptions, I argue that we must help our students develop a critical ecological perspective with which to interpret the basic connections between humans and the world. Inquiry Island—The Prequel: A Critical Ecological Social Studies Experience is a simulation activity designed to help students develop such a perspective. Like the original Inquiry Island, this updated version introduces our social and environmental challenges and explores how to address these problems through civic action. However, the newer version better reflects our current socioenvironmental conditions and more accurately depicts the deep human–environment interconnectedness essential to the development of a critical ecological perspective.

Keywords:

• Critical ecological social studies
• simulation experience
• socioenvironmental education
• role playing activity

Notes

1 Until recently, I have encountered reproof from respected colleagues for considering environmental issues part of the social studies curriculum. The main concerns seem to be that focusing on the environment could weaken or undermine attention to history and the social sciences or to other systemic problems. These concerns, while perhaps understandable, seem to assume human thought and activity can be understood and addressed within an ecological vacuum. Recent events suggest that this is decidedly not the case.

2 Elsewhere I have addressed the fundamental problem of anthropocentrism, or human supremacy, and the anthropocentric hierarchy, which reinforce all other social hierarchies (Houser, 2022, 2023).

3 The nine years from 2013 through 2021 rank among the 10 warmest years on record (since 1880, when such records first began to be recorded) (http://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature retrieved on 11/6/22).

4 The newest version of this activity is called “the prequel” because its historical location is set more than a thousand years earlier than the original version.

5 Although you may need to clarify procedural details, your official role should be that of neutral facilitator. However, you should subtly intervene if the activity ceases to reflect plausible historical events, such as the Newcomers uncharacteristically deciding to give back “their” land, the Newcomer population inexplicably decreasing, the original Islanders continuing to accommodate the Newcomers despite sustained disrespect and aggression or, during the later stages of the activity, sea levels miraculously receding rather than rising.