Democracy and environment: Rethinking our educational priorities.

摘要

Two groups of scholars have recently pined prominence. Both are concerned about what is taught in America's schools and how it is taught. One group is focused on the need to strengthen a democracy they see as weakening and under attack. A second is concerned about an impending ecological catastrophe.;These two concerns are often regarded as separate, unrelated, even conflicting. This paper argues that democracy and environmental issues actually have much in common; that both are fundamentally concerned with relationships and both are threatened in similar ways, for similar reasons. Moreover, if fully and property understood, these two crises can be recognized as mere symptoms of a much deeper crisis of modern, industrialized cultures, which are defined as vast, paradigmatic "super-cultures" that share enough in common that they can be seen as unique in their own right.;To address this cultural crisis will require deliberate, widespread intervention. This intervention should begin in our public schools: first, because a major purpose of public education is enculturation. Second, educators have moral and ethical obligations that suggest that such intervention is justified, perhaps even imperative.;If public education is to play a proactive role in our cultural evolution, sweeping curricular and pedagogical reforms will be necessary. Cultural issues cannot be separated from other aspects of a curriculum, or set aside as a separate discipline. Therefore fundamental curricular and pedagogical changes will need to be made throughout the entire educational system. Democracy (how we interact with one another) and environment (how we interact with the world around us) ought to form the foundational priorities on which all such reforms rest.;An undertaking of this magnitude will encounter a great many obstacles. Some of the most prominent of those obstacles are assessed and serve as broad indicators of certain key areas in which reform efforts might be initiated.;Finally, evidence is introduced that suggests that such reforms could gain widespread public support. And, perhaps more to the point, as the severity of the crisis becomes increasingly apparent, and its symptoms increasing manifest, we will have little choice but to realize that we must act.