Chris Ward
Human Ecology Essay - Draft 2.1
Fall 06/07 - September 15th 2006
Sustainable Education: Human Ecology, Science, and Technology
“The impending destruction of mankind…man cannot violate or transgress the bounds of his humanism, or his human limits without tragic consequence.” Karel Čapek - Utopian R.U.R. (1920)
I will get straight to the point. If we are to avoid the bleak, resourceless, polluted and war-torn future that many suspect awaits all of our future generations (if they are even to exist), there must be some significant changes made in how our educational system of today operates at the most fundamental of levels. One significant, but so far unappreciated formula to revitalize and remake positive once more the potential fate of the humankind, is the manipulation of the tendencies of the masses by way of injecting a dose of a Human Ecological approach to education into the standardized education models of the world. With Human Ecology becoming a fundamental source for the education of the future generations, it might, just maybe, still be possible to reclaim our children’s future for them once again.
Currently the public school education system churns through hundreds of millions of students each year, each one destined to be an active citizen of the world in one way or another. Each individual has millions of opportunities in his life to work toward sustaining a world of abundant natural resources, clean water, and calm and negotiable relations, of which are the three most fundamental elements of the human species survival. While on the other hand, each individual has an equal number of opportunities to bring destruction upon his own world and destroy the chances for survival of the future generations too. It is truly “each unto his own,” but the effects are communal.
It is without a doubt that the choices each person makes throughout their lives are highly influenced by the education received during the first 16-25 years of their lives. It also seems reasonable then, that the education of the people can be analyzed and corrected where errors in logic, or the right’s and wrong’s, relative to the morals we must have to position our choices more in favor of our ultimate survival, and to keep the more consistently on the side where the ultimate survival of the future generations is valued over personal gain and competitive arrogance. Otherwise, choices which are self-centered and destructive are likely to continue dominating the lives of the masses in full-force, as we see they are now across the globe, and they will do so at the loss of the unborn generations to follow. We must exploit this knowledge that we have then of our ability to influence through education to create a natural tendency amongst humans to draw a larger proportion of our choices from the former way of thinking rather the latter.
Honestly though, there is a lot of work to be done. However regretfully, I can only say that even after an incredibly simple and superficial analysis of the current state of public education, I have to admit to myself that its state is quite pitiful. The reality is that, although it might quack like a duck, it slithers like a snake, and drains the lifeblood from us all like a leech. It’s a horrible contradiction in terms to even call the average public, tax-funded school “a house of education.” When really what it is, is a perfect example of an oxymoron.
The public school system is (in America at least) built around a tradition to teach how to follow orders, and not how to learn. Very rarely do we leave the catch phrases on posters, synthesized and summarized text-books, uncreative exams and quizzes, and incredibly monotonous and mindless motions of copy, paste, and memorize, except for, of course, that really cool fifth grade science fair project!
It also lacks a sense of what is right and wrong, relative to how the human species must live in order to continue surviving on this earth through the infinite possible generations we still have to come. Although however, it does in fact talk a lot of the “right’s, wrong’s” and other morals of student conduct such as keeping quite unless spoken to, asking permission from an authority to use the restroom, no missing school without an authorities permission, keeping your shirts tucked in, ceaseless competition against all others, and no sharing information! And this of course is followed up with a full range of uncreative and rather harsh punishments for any “misbehavior.” Of which none of the rights or wrongs actually correspond truly to either the nature of humankind or the nature of the world in which we inhabit. Instead however they correspond to a false nature of authority and dominance that expects absolute submission and control. This is not human ecology.
Another interesting, but unfortunate fact is that the average education models of today demand that all humankind respect their authority without question, while claiming their own thrown as the most important thing in our lives. Saying loudly and clearly, if we did not have “them,” (the education systems and the authorities within the education systems known as teachers) we would be as good a dead. This, in my opinion, is a completely ignorant, arrogant, disrespectful, and a horribly destructive and violent lie. We are human. We have survived millennia already without any formal or standardized school systems in place. In fact, it is my belief quite to the contrary, that the school system itself, as it has developed and come to be over time what it is today, is a major cause (if not the root cause) of why we are in the rather gloomy place we are with respect to our future chances of survival on this planet as is. It is all the contradictions that that can be found in and around what is today the standard education model, which brings me to say “it might quack like a duck, but it sure ain’t one”. Garbage in, garbage out.
Take for a concrete example the average public school cafeteria, which I use as a simplified analogy to represent the base standards that the rest of the education system can be assumed to abide by. It is a disgraceful image of the nature of what we face.
The food is of some of the lowest quality available ever in our history. Mostly manufactured, mass produced, and frozen, it occurs very often that students complain of horrible stomach cramps after consuming it. Students are also left with few alternatives to choose from, except for those who are lucky enough to have parents who have the time, money, and patience enough to prepare food for them everyday to bring on their own, and teach them on their own that eating healthy is one of the first most fundamental aspects to be appreciated in life.
However, even with outside influence, enduring 16 or more years in inescapable close proximity of this “food” and environment influences and teaches even the most health-minded students to except and expect the low quality standards of food and health for the rest of their lives. For everyone else, fast-food diets and candy bars unquestionably become the new standard for which they will live with the rest of their lives, and face all of the consequences too.
Alternatives that are often available in place of the standard “tray lunch” are also much of the same, horribly fattening, and sweet, fried, or worse still, generally packaged and branded. Therefore it is not only unhealthy for lack of nutritious value, loaded with sugar, preservatives, or lacks in the color green or any natural flavor, it is also purchased from non-local, branded manufacturers at the lowest price possible. A lesson in economics that teaches the future leaders of the world that cheating consumers out of quality and investing outside of ones own community for a higher gain in personal economy are standard and acceptable choices to make. It also teaches the consumers that these qualities are of little or no importance at all. The negative consequences are hardly even made known. And it unfortunately also draws acceptance from an early age to the corruptive techniques of marketing and branding, causing mindless purchasing and consumption of goods by name and brand alone. If it is what they grow up doing without vision of alternatives, it becomes an accepted standard of life. “We are what we eat,” as the old saying goes.
The social environment of the cafeteria is also an interesting and pitiful example of how the public school system teaches our children how to act with arrogance and disrespect towards our own kind. Consider how natural it is for us to look at a cafeteria worker (cleaner, cook, cashier, etc) and see them as something of a lower class. It is natural because this is how the school system itself treats them by way of lower wages, less respectful treatment, and fewer choices for how to creatively work or improve upon their own work for the benefit of their clients, who in fact are their own, and our own children. They are not respected in positions of authority, but instead they are basically given position of mindless laborers, and nothing more.
Even leaving you with only a few examples of how even in the environment which our public schools provide their students, we can easily see how it denies to the growing generations the ability to see and vision choices that might invite greater opportunity to grow and create a world which acts to sustain life rather than constantly increase mindless consumption. Instead, it teaches that it is best to leave consumption unchecked and unthought of, and the responsibility of any consequences should be left to be dealt with in the distant future rather than the present.
This leaves us with the famous philosophical “chicken or the egg” question too. It is hard to blame the destructive consequences on the consumers when there are few viable alternative choices given. It seems only natural to get accustomed to expect nothing more than the weekly lunch menu, or the treatment of the workers, or the standards of destructive economic models when we are forced to endure them for so many years without choice. Plus, since self-responsibility, self-reflection, autonomy of choices, respect, and individual and communal health are not made to be priorities in the place that hails itself to be the house of learning, who is to blame in the end, the person being forced to live in the system, or the owners of the system itself?
The answer to this question, as with most philosophical questions is mute. It does not really matter in the end because what matters is what is happening today and the prospects of the future. If we are to continue into the future for many more generations to come, an integration of responsibility into life itself and the empowerment of the growing minds of the future as both creators and consumers in the ways of sustainable and responsible living for the future must be made. If we are to avoid the pitfalls of exhaustive and destructive consumption, I believe it is essential that responsibility and mindful sustainability must be reconnected throughout all aspects of education on a personal level, rather than being isolated into some general category such as Ethics 101 or as is in many cases, left out completely. We can not continue to abstract responsibility and sustainability into course themes. It must become the fundamental basis of the education system itself.
My proposition therefore is to integrate into the current education system an approach such as the one Human Ecology provides into the standard methodology and curriculum of teacher training, faculty and staff relationships to the educational process and to the students themselves, and to the formulation of the education models from which the students will exploit to share understanding and knowledge of the worlds inner-workings across all disciplines. Students should be the masters of their own education, and the human ecological model is an approach which destroys the traditional view of student as learner, and teacher as master. Students are encouraged to cross disciplines and integrate theory and practice using hands on learning methods that enable and encourage students to find and exploit their own personal ambitions and understandings of right and wrong through practical and self motivated experiential learning. While students are as well encouraged through the educational process, the curriculum, and the environment in which they learn, to integrate consciousness and respect of the environment and the people in it, as well the realization of the impact we as individuals and as a community have on the eminent future ahead of us (a future which can not be avoided, but can be destroyed if our top priorities are the budget and concerns of authority rather than the health and survival of our progeny).
There is little room for contradiction, and although it’s hard to avoid, Human Ecology is a method which teaches by way of representing matters as closely as possible to the ways are, and trusting students to have the capacity to make choices which meet the needs of the future generations as opposed to being a living hypocrisy and walking contradiction. There is no reason to hide reality behind a veil of hypocrisy, we are all human, and we all make mistakes. We must take for ourselves the responsibility for our mistakes that might hurt our chances of communal survival, but we must learn to correct them together.
I know that to have a education system that models the standard citizen to be full of respect and self-responsibility, so that he might make more choices only after considerable thought has been put into understanding the effects of each choice made to make choices more consistently that are sustainable over the long-term might seem a little far fetched and Utopian. However, please, first just consider the fact that even young children are able to learn such concepts even before they can even read.
Authors of children’s books around the world have taken the lead in ensuring that children are taught how to be responsible from as early an age as their parents begin to read to them. In even the most simple of bed-time stories and fairy tales have general themes such as proper disposal of and the minimization of waste, cause and effect, staying healthy, respecting others and the like that are seamlessly woven in and out of the texts. Each one teaches children how to simply be responsible and treat the world and all the creatures in it with love in their own way. They also teach them how to live and act sustainably so that we can live together in harmony and work together to keep our species alive. Children learn to take care of themselves, while also taking care of the world in which they live. They learn to eat green vegetables instead of those that come from a can, keep their environment clean, help others, share, treat people in the way they would like to be treated, recognize the effects of their choices and try to choose wisely, collaborate to solve problems, and not make things or say things that could hurt others, etcetera.
The numerous themes which children encounter on a daily basis in their years before they begin there sentence to schooling and their ability to understand and act upon the simple concepts these texts have in them, leads me to believe that the challenge of raising future generations of youth to grow up with the mentality of sustainable living and responsibility through choice is indeed feasible. We just need to dedicate ourselves to keeping these themes in all the texts we read, whether for night-time tales or mathematical and scientific text-books. Moreover, we need to keep them around the students in all the environments were they learn. Nobody learns what is directly taught while in a state of hypocrisy. They only learn that hypocrisy is the norm, so what is being taught can justifiably be ignored.
On this note I would like to clarify and conclude that I do not intend to suggest that the Human Ecological perspective is the final solution to the world’s problems, nor a guarantee for the survival of the human race. Rather, I believe that many seeds of possibility lie within Human Ecology for rebuilding a more sustainable world. By exploiting the natural human desire for personal survival along side the natural tendency to be highly influenced by the environment in which we live and the “education” we receive, the new strong, sustainable roots the world needs to disrupt the growth of destructive consumption, and immoral and inhuman technological progress has much more opportunity to sprout and take hold. It is in our children’s best interest to do so, even if we can not yet still know their names of feel the warmth of their skin. Sustainability and responsibility must become part of who we are, and with Human Ecology you can learn to quake like a duck and actually be one too.
Posted by drpoo as College Of The Atlantic, Peace Works!, Personal Endeveavors at 2:45 PM PST