Towards an ecologization of education

ABSTRACT

The paper begins by reviewing, philosophically, some key concepts and ideas that have shaped important aspects both of how we perceive environmental issues and of our attitudes towards nature. Some currently influential views that seek to undermine the authority of appeals to nature in environmental decision-making are identified. In response, the paper develops a phenomenological ecology that reveals important ways in which nature is transcendent and possesses its own integrity, agency, and intrinsic value that need to be reaffirmed in our thinking about the environment and environmental education. It is argued that developing a properly receptive-responsive relationship to these aspects of nature is central to human wellbeing and therefore to education as a whole, and that this entails a need significantly to “ecologize” education.

KEYWORDS:

• ecology
• environmental consciousness
• metaphysics of mastery
• nature
• scientism
• sustainability

Notes

1 Of course, this is not to say that there could not be an overriding reason for felling the tree—only that (and very importantly) it has a kind of moral standing that must be properly taken into account by any decision to do so.

2 This has been forcefully articulated by, for example, ‘The Earth Needs Half’ movement (Kopnina, Washington, Gray, & Taylor, 2018).

3 For a recent discussion of this, see Washington (2018).

4 See, for example, Farrelly (2018).

5 See, for example, Pulkki, Dahlin, and Varri (2016).

6 See, for example, Magrini (2015, Ch 3; 2019) and also Blenkinsop, Affifi, Piersol, and Sitka-Sage (2017).

7 See Bonnett (2009) for a discussion of this.

8 See Bonnett (2015b) on this.

9 See Postma and Smeyers (2012) for a discussion of spiral time in the context of developing environmental understanding and responsibility.