Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture

Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture PDF Author: C. A. Bowers
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791497283
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
This book is a wake-up call for environmentalists who need to consider how current educational ideals and practices undermine efforts to create a more sustainable future. It is also a wake-up call for educators who continue to base their reform efforts on the primacy of the individual, while ignoring the fact that the individual is nested in culture, and culture is nested in (and thus dependent upon) natural ecosystems. Bowers argues that the modern way of understanding moral education, creativity, intelligence, and the role of direct experience in the learning process cannot be supported by evidence from such fields as anthropology, cultural linguistics, and the sociology of knowledge.

Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture

Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture PDF Author: C. A. Bowers
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791497283
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book

Book Description
This book is a wake-up call for environmentalists who need to consider how current educational ideals and practices undermine efforts to create a more sustainable future. It is also a wake-up call for educators who continue to base their reform efforts on the primacy of the individual, while ignoring the fact that the individual is nested in culture, and culture is nested in (and thus dependent upon) natural ecosystems. Bowers argues that the modern way of understanding moral education, creativity, intelligence, and the role of direct experience in the learning process cannot be supported by evidence from such fields as anthropology, cultural linguistics, and the sociology of knowledge.

Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture

Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture PDF Author: C. A. Bowers
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791424971
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Exposes the faulty assumptions that underlie modern education in the areas of moral education, creativity, and intelligence, showing how these assumptions must be changed in order to produce an ecologically sustainable culture.

Educating for Eco-justice and Community

Educating for Eco-justice and Community PDF Author: C. A. Bowers
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820323060
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
We believe in social justice. We support educational reform. Yet unless we reframe our approaches to both, says C. A. Bowers, the social justice attained through educational reform will only lead to more intractable forms of consumerism and further impoverishment of our communities. In Educating for Eco-Justice and Community Bowers outlines a strategy for educational reform that confronts the rapid degradation of our ecosystems by renewing the face-to-face, intergenerational traditions that can serve as alternatives to our hyper-consumerist, technology-driven worldview. Bowers explains how current technological and progressive programs of educational reform operate on deep cultural assumptions that came out of the Enlightenment and led to the Industrial Revolution. These beliefs frame our relationship with nature in adversarial terms, view progress as inevitable, and elevate the individual over community, expertise over intergenerational knowledge, and profit over reciprocity. By making eco-justice a priority of educational reform, we can begin to: democratize developments in science and technology in ways that eliminate eco-racism; reverse the global processes that are worsening the economic and political inequities between the hemispheres; expose the cultural forces that turn aspects of daily life--from education and entertainment to work and leisure--into market-dependent relationships; uplift knowledge and traditions of intergenerationally connected communities; and develop a sense of moral responsibility for the long-term consequences of our excessive material demands. In the tradition of Wendell Berry, David Orr, and Kirkpatrick Sale, Bowers thinks about our place in the natural world and the current economies to show how we can reform education and create a less consumer-driven society.

Ecological Education in Action

Ecological Education in Action PDF Author: Gregory A. Smith
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791439852
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Celebrates the work of educators who explore ecological issues in school and non-school settings. Gives examples of ways to impact the thinking of children and adults in order to affirm the values of sufficiency, mutual support, and community.

Educating for a Culture of Social and Ecological Peace

Educating for a Culture of Social and Ecological Peace PDF Author: Anita L. Wenden
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791484645
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Examines the overlapping aims, values, and concepts in peace and environmental education.

Let Them Eat Data

Let Them Eat Data PDF Author: C. A. Bowers
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 082032230X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Do computers foster cultural diversity? Ecological sustainability? In our age of high-tech euphoria we seem content to leave tough questions like these to the experts. That dangerous inclination is at the heart of this important examination of the commercial and educational trends that have left us so uncritically optimistic about global computing. Contrary to the attitudes that have been marketed and taught to us, says C. A. Bowers, the fact is that computers operate on a set of Western cultural assumptions and a market economy that drives consumption. Our indoctrination includes the view of global computing innovations as inevitable and on a par with social progress--a perspective dismayingly suggestive of the mindset that engendered the vast cultural and ecological disruptions of the industrial revolution and world colonialism. In Let Them Eat Data Bowers discusses important issues that have fallen into the gap between our perceptions and the realities of global computing, including the misuse of the theory of evolution to justify and legitimate the global spread of computers, and the ecological and cultural implications of unmooring knowledge from its local contexts as it is digitized, commodified, and packaged for global consumption. He also suggests ways that educators can help us think more critically about technology. Let Them Eat Data is essential reading if we are to begin democratizing technological decisions, conserving true cultural diversity and intergenerational forms of knowledge, and living within the limits and possibilities of the earth’s natural systems.

The Culture of Denial

The Culture of Denial PDF Author: C. A. Bowers
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791434642
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Argues that environmentalists must expand their political involvement to include the reform of public schools and universities, and that education must be revamped to support ecologically sustainable paths for society.

Design for a Sustainable Culture

Design for a Sustainable Culture PDF Author: Astrid Skjerven
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351857967
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
As culture is becoming increasingly recognised as a crucial element of sustainable development, design competence has emerged as a useful tool in creating a meaningful life within a sustainable mental, cultural and physical environment. Design for a Sustainable Culture explores the relationship between sustainability, culture and the shaping of human surroundings by examining the significance and potential of design as a tool for the creation of sustainable development. Drawing on interdisciplinary case studies and investigations from Europe, North America and India, this book discusses theoretical, methodological and educational aspects of the role of design in relation to human well-being and provides a unique perspective on the interface between design, culture and sustainability. This book will appeal to researchers as well as postgraduate and undergraduate students in design and design literacy, crafts, architecture and environmental planning, but also scholars of sustainability from other disciplines who wish to understand the role and impact of design and culture in sustainable development.

Transformative Eco-Education for Human and Planetary Survival

Transformative Eco-Education for Human and Planetary Survival PDF Author: Jing Lin
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1617355046
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
Transformative eco-education is environmental education that is literally needed to transform and save our planet, especially during the global ecological crises of our present century. Such education demands inner transformation of many deeply rooted ideas, such as the following: the Earth exists merely to provide for human comfort; the extinction or reduction of other species does not matter; we are free to consume or destroy natural resources at will but are safe from destruction ourselves; and the Earth will continue to sustain us, even if we do not sustain the Earth. Unless these concepts are changed, we will increase global warming and add to the ruin of much of the Earth. This book presents powerful ideas for transformative eco-education. At this time of ever-increasing ecological crisis, such education is needed more than ever before. We urge readers to use the ideas and activities in this book with your students, develop them further, and create new conceptions to share with other educators and students. The chapters in this book provide key principles, of which the following are just a few. First, educators can and should prepare students for natural disasters. Second, stories, case studies, the arts, and hands-on environmental experience, all enriched by reflection and discussion, can offer profound learning about ecology. Third, education at all levels can benefit from a true ecological emphasis. Fourth, teachers must receive preparation in how to employ transformative eco-education. Fifth, Indigenous wisdom can offer important, holistic, spiritual paths to understanding and caring for nature, and other spiritual traditions also provide valid ways of comprehending humans as part of the universal web of existence. Sixth, transformative eco-education can be an antidote to not only to environmental breakdown, but also to materialistic overconsumption and moral confusion. Seventh, we can only heal the Earth by also healing ourselves. If we heed these principles, together we can make transformative eco-education a blazing torch to light the path for the current century and beyond.

Educating for Eco-justice and Community

Educating for Eco-justice and Community PDF Author: C. A. Bowers
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780820323053
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Reading, writing, arithmetic - and eco-justice; We believe in social justice. We support educational reform. Yet unless we reframe our approaches to both, says C. A. Bowers, the social justice attained through educational reform will only lead to more intractable forms of consumerism and further impoverishment of our communities. In Educating for Eco-Justice and Community Bowers outlines a strategy for educational reform that confronts the rapid degradation of our ecosystems by renewing the face-to-face, intergenerational traditions that can serve as alternatives to our hyper-consumerist, technology-driven worldview. Bowers explains how current technological and progressive programs of educational reform operate on deep cultural assumptions that came out of the Enlightenment and led to the Industrial Revolution. These beliefs frame our relationship with nature in adversarial terms, view progress as inevitable, and elevate the individual over community, expertise over intergenerational knowledge, and profit over reciprocity. By making eco-justice a priority of educational reform, we can begin to democratize developments in science and technology in ways that eliminate ecoracism; reverse the global processes that are worsening the economic and political inequities between the hemispheres; expose the cultural forces that turn aspects of daily life - from education and entertainment to work and leisure - into market-dependent relationships; uplift knowledge and traditions of intergenerationally connected communities; and develop a sense of moral responsibility for the long-term consequences of our excessive material demands. In the tradition of Wendell Berry, David Orr, and Kirkpatrick Sale, Bowers thinks about our place in the natural world and the current economies to show how we can reform education and create a less consumer-driven society.