esci302blog

Well, the personality is on the editing floor, but here is my video.

My Creative Journal consisted of me jotting down notes and thoughts about stuff we did in class the past couple weeks. I enjoyed the article Friluftsliv: The Scandinavian Philosophy of Outdoor Life by Hans Gelter (2000). Friluftsliv, or “free air life”, as a philosophy makes sense. Nature is appreciated for nature’s sake; not as a commodity, or something utilitarian, or a conquest. It teaches us to avoid tokenism in outdoor education. My one reservation about Gelter’s article is he uses countryside nature in his examples because he comes from a place where it is in abundance. I would argue Friluftsliv can occur in your local park.

I also wrote about an old German proverb that shot into my head after reading the luft in friluftsliv. The saying is Stadtluft macht frei which translates to city air makes you free. The philosophy behind this statement is the vibrancy of a city creates a certain intellectual freedom and exchange of ideas between people. I wonder too if there is a more literal sense to the saying going back to the time of free cities and vassalage.  Both ideas just sort of represent the different sides of humanity, the social part that drives us to urbanization and our great cities, yet there is a part of us that looks back to nature to combat the perceived corruption that is inevitable with over-urbanization. Both are necessary to feed the mind and soul.

I also reflected on the outdoor activities we did as a class.  My group chose to do the 5 minute demonstration in which we were trying to save bees. Ten years ago, I might have felt foolish parading about; now, I don’t care. You’re in someone’s mind for a second and then out of it. Any embarrassment is one’s own projections. Also, as teachers, if you are afraid to look foolish, you might be in the wrong profession. The exercise made me think more about how you raise awareness of environmental issues. How many people really pay attention to that a kind of demonstration or do they dismiss it, as I do, as just noise? As future educators, I think we may have the best forum at our disposal to inform the public regarding environmental issues.

Finally, I jotted my ideas about interdisciplinary planning and thought back to the article by David Orr (2004) What is Education For? and about the line “All education is environmental education”. I think we all demonstrated with our unit plans how different issues are applicable within other subjects. While some subjects are more explicitly related to the environment, every thing we do in education is ultimately aimed at understanding our environment from mathematical models to philosophy. Essentially there is just one huge outcome and a plethora of indicators.

References

Gelter H., (2000). Friluftsliv: The Scandinavian Philosophy of Outdoor Life. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education. 5(1), 77-90.

 Orr, David. (2004). What is Education For? In Earth in Mind, p. 7-15. Washignton DC: First Island Press.

This week, on the walks to and from my car, I noticed an increase in my sightings of migratory Canadian Geese heading south for the winter. During our stillness exercise this week, the trend continued as I watched four groups fly overhead. However, the neat thing about these sightings was I could hear as the wind whipped around the geese’s bodies and wings. It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard that sound, but it has been awhile.

Part of my understanding of nature is related to birds. The birds signify the changing of the season. If I wanted, I suppose I could refer to winter as the time after the birds fly south. This thought process was triggered by Joseph Naytowhow’s story of the elder who spoke of the treaty in analogies. I forget the other two, but I remember the analogy of “as long as the grass grows”. Essentially, in Western parlance, this could be described as the treaties being agreements lasting in perpetuity. This shows the difference between Western and Aboriginal perspective. In this case, aboriginal interpretation of the treaties is an expression of their relationship with nature. Conversely, using the word perpetuity is expressive of a term more familiar with law or finance (i.e. cash flows with an infinite horizon). So for me, Joseph highlighted the importance of discussing language in Treaty Ed and Environmental Education.

Understanding how Aboriginals use their language can be a great insight for Treaty Ed and to Environmental Education. The classic cliché of the Inuit (I’m aware they are not part of any treaties) is they have 50+ words for snow. The reality is they are not synonyms, rather they have a word for snow that clumps, snow that flakes, snow that crunches underfoot, etc. Their intimacy with their arctic environment facilitated this way of thinking. A similar situation existed with First Nations as they too lived closely with their natural environment. Consequently, the environment is central to their understanding of the world as it has been passed down from previous generations. Without EE, student’s understanding of Treaty Ed is limited because they can only understand one side of the conversation.

The biggest resistance of the day for me came with the rattle and powwow type singing. I have never enjoyed the music styling of First Nations. Frankly, it’s part of why I do not overly enjoy their cultural performances. However, this is more of an aesthetic resistance than a resistance by my ego. (By aesthetics, I am not referring to aesthetics as created through my Western socialization, but rather the pure discomfort I feel from hearing the music; the same discomfort I get from certain styles of Western music.)

There are several places I contribute to creating my eco-identity. The illustrations from my creative journal represent some of the places I don’t go more than a couple days without remembering in some shape or form. Starting on the bottom left, these are memories I have from my Eberle family reunions.  They used to hold on a farm. I still remember running around with my brother and cousins through the massive garden of peas, picking them and running into the wheat field and just gorging on those peas. As night would come, they would start a bonfire. With those bonfires some of my earliest memories of what not to do environmentally were formed. The amount of Styrofoam cups we would toss in seemed endless. Oh, everybody said how bad it was and not to breathe in the fumes, nevertheless we still tossed those cups into fire and watched them shrivel to nothing.
Moving clockwise, what appears like a mountain range is supposed to be snow covered fields in the dead of winter. That is a signature prairie landscape that seems to either invoke feelings of desolation or expansive beauty. For me it has always been the latter.
Next, moving clockwise is a drawing of somewhere in Cypress Hills. As a child, I used to vacation there a lot with my family. It wasn’t just my immediate family there, but also my mother’s sisters and their families as well as my grandparents. During these trips, I remember us ‘older’ cousins would venture out into the forest. One trip, I remember traversing this log and falling off as I crossed. I still remember the sheer terror as I clung to the bottom of that log and then fell into five inches of water/muck.
Moving on, my next illustration is of a creek. My grandparents used to live on the outskirts of Moose Jaw (what part wasn’t?) and my brother, cousin and I used to explore the areas around their house. Summer and winter, it didn’t matter; the creek was always fun. Summer offered an underwater world to view while winter gave us a surface to slide on.  Of course, my most vivid memory is my cousin’s leg plunging through the ice.
In the bottom right, I have the grotto from St. Pete’s colony. I like the quote from Tilden (1977), “We sat there three or four minutes; wordless; drinking it all in; and then he said something I have never forgotten: “You can talk all you want to about how this valley was formed, but there is where your science ends and Almighty God begins.” Nature by itself can be very spiritual, it’s only enhanced in the grotto.
In the center, but not the center of my eco-identity, is a weeping birch. I don’t why my family did this, but every tree in our yard when I was growing up was said to be someone’s tree. The weeping birch was my tree. It’s still one of favorite kinds of trees. Unfortunately, a birch beetle epidemic swept through the city awhile ago and most of the city’s weeping birch population was decimated, including mine. I still look for these trees around the city and when I travel.

References

Freeman Tilden’s (1977) Interpreting Our Heritage

In my first blog post, my journey towards ecoliteracy began with an excursion in my own backyard. I went on the excursion then because I believed, as I still believe now, ecoliteracy involves nature appreciation. This notion would extend into my reading of David Orr’s (2004) What is Education for? in which he proposed a multidisciplinary approach to education. To better enjoy my excursion I needed to draw from several disciplines (biology, chemistry and climate geography to name a few). However, I spent much of my blog challenging Orr’s notion that environmental education will help solve the world’s environmental issues. I always like to play the devil’s advocate and the style Orr chose to write made it very easy to take an opposite position. I find my opinion of environmental writers is often of the stereotype of an academic in their ivory tower. That is, their writing often seems condescending and idealistic stemming from a singular viewpoint. I think the natural response for the general reader is to put up barriers, thereby impeding any dialogue. For me, this is not my way of convincing myself they are incorrect or flawed in their thinking, its just I think it is difficult to appear pragmatic when preaching. What I can draw from this is when teaching and thinking about ecoliteracy, it should not be posed as a critique or indictment, but an examination of how and why we interact with our environment and is there a possibility to do things better.

My second blog expanded my ecoliteracy to focus on systems thinking, information flows, sustainability and leverage points. This is when my definition of ecoliteracy starts to involve complex issues, but I do not yet think it is very complex. I am focusing on definitions of ecoliteracy one may find in a Western textbook. My thinking is shown to be very Eurocentric. While I respect, tolerate and try to view issues from different perspectives, my preference is to work within the constructs of my own culture. However, viewing the world through different perspectives is not supposed to replace my perspective, but help me understand other people’s viewpoint better. In this way, I can develop a more complex understanding of ecoliteracy.

I found the braiding process not difficult, but counter intuitive to my normal processes. My preference is for dialectics; I like when dialogues lead to syntheses. It’s not so much I demand a singular view, but there are certain fundamentals I believe must be included in ecoliteracy. Braiding called for equal weighting of the understandings of ecoliteracy expressed in the other poems/letters. I recognized the differences as valid, but in keeping within braiding – i.e. trying to avoid assimilation or synthesis – I found I ended up underweighting the other viewpoints. In this way I avoided making my understanding of ecoliteracy complex while stressing only what I felt was at the core of ecoliteracy.

My third blog is actually structured similarly to my first post. I reflected on the nature walk we took and expressed how it is important to develop nature appreciation through experience in nature. I also bring back systems flows. Then I took to playing the devil’s advocate again to challenge Newberry’s (2012) article Canoe Pedagogy and Colonial History: Exploring contested spaces of outdoor environmental education. For me, Newberry came off as a leftist caricature and it just detracted from her arguments. Reflecting on the post, it appears this opinion made it appear as though I was trying to diminish Newberry’s perspective. When arguing against a point, it can come across this way sometimes, but in expanding my understanding of ecoliteracy, I could include both my macro scale perspective on land’s history as well as Newberry’s perspective on land’s history.

Overall, I noticed a like to play the devil’s advocate or provide a contradictory argument. This goes back to my preference for dialectics. My feeling is a position is only made stronger through challenge. However, in arguing against a position, I feel I have unintentionally tried to marginalize those perspectives. I have tended to define ecoliteracy through Western dominant discourses, highlighting systems thinking, information flow, sustainability, leverage points and nature appreciation. This is because this is my comfort zone. I have a tendency to devalue other perspectives who fail to adequately challenge my own perspectives. Another thing I noticed in looking at my past blogs is how I did not address population issues enough. I consider population issues to be a big part of my conception of ecoliteracy. I found when writing my blogs, they would run a little long or it would not fit in organically when I tried to include something about population issues. In Garrett Hardin’s (1968) The Tragedy of the Commons (1968), I saw many of my thoughts reflected including the ethical concerns surrounding this problem. This demonstrates there are still many more perspectives and concepts I can add to my understanding of ecoliteracy that expand on my fundamentals.

References

Hardin, Garrett (1968) The Tragedy of the Commons

Newberry, L. (2012). Canoe Pedagogy and Colonial History: Exploring contested spaces of outdoor environmental education. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education. 17, 30-45.

Orr, David (2004), What is Education for? In Earth in Mind, pp. 7-15. Washington DC: First Island Press.

The nature walk we took the other day in class helped me realize the importance of creating nature appreciation in the journey towards ecoliteracy. During the walk, some lichen on a rock caught my attention. I had learned at some point in Bio 101 the symbiotic nature of lichen but it was a fact since forgotten. Now I have an experiential memory with which to associate lichen and will most likely now be able to remember the symbiotic nature between the cyanobacteria and fungus. Recognition of this symbiosis inspired a flow diagram from the sun to the eventual soil creation from the break down of the rock. From the soil, the branching can really start to spread reinforcing the notion of the interconnectedness of nature.

The second drawing is a very limited flow map of some of the human migrations I could think of over the past 40,000 years. The map became unreadable pretty quickly due to the sheer volume of migrations. What it shows to me is the human race is dynamic and ultimately is not fixed to any geographical location. If one looks closely at the flow map, one can find the colonial period in which two opposite moving migratory paths finally crashed into each other (and boy did they ever). In “Canoe Pedagogy”, Liz Newberry (2012) chooses to make this period the focal point in which to understand the world today. It’s a good period to investigate considering it leads to our current political and power dynamics. Further, only in examining the history of colonialism can one understand the development of the structural poverty and marginalization faced by indigenous peoples (though this knowledge should not be what compels one towards social justice but rather compassion for your fellow man should be the driving engine, not ‘liberal guilt’). But one could argue in the macro scale in the distant future, the colonial era will eventually be viewed as just another major human migration; done by humanity many times before where populations mix and displace each other.

As for Newberry’s (2012) application of colonial history towards nature she states, “Because wilderness is dependent on the displacement of Aboriginal people, canoe-tripping in wilderness spaces is not and can never be innocent or uncomplicated.” I understand the sentiment; all which we enjoy in North America (our wealth, nature, etc.) is predicated on aboriginal displacement (a position we may find a lot of people display apathy or even tacit acceptance), but it portrays aboriginals as static, forever tied to the land, and constructs Europeans as somehow distinct from the human migratory experience. Populations have moved, displaced and mixed with each other for millennia. If we want to really construct the stories of our landscapes, we cannot think only in terms of pre and post European contact.

References

Newberry, L. (2012).  Canoe Pedagogy and Colonial History: Exploring contested spaces of outdoor environmental education. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education. 17, 30-45.

While I was writing my poem, I had Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias in my thoughts. I wanted to draw on the themes of man’s hubris and arrogance. So I created a narrative were mankind celebrates in their technological achievements and perceived mastery over the natural world yet now find themselves facing some serious ecological challenges and a disconnect from the natural world. I was a little surprised how few of the other poems and letters I listened to focused on the larger ecological issues. Rather, the focus or tones were more personal and sentimental in nature. Admittedly, I am not overly sentimental and it is reflected in the creativity of my poem (the hackneyed reflective line at the end made it in partly because it went with my rhyme scheme), but this allowed for the differences to contrast well.

My poem comes across as an indictment of our cultural values and focuses on what has been done; the other poems celebrate environmentalism and personal sacrifice. There is optimism from the other poems/letters and an expression of creating a healthier world. Derek’s poem exemplifies a desire for a better future as he waxes poetic about his son. Derek comes to understand ecoliteracy through his son and with it an inferred desire for sustainability. Sean’s letter is an example of the celebration of environmentalism and personal sacrifice in which he acknowledges the environmental example his mother provided for him through recycling and reusing.

Zane’s letter really was the only poem/letter that I heard which I could find some similarity. Zane mentioned all the damage caused to the landscape through the oil industry. The letter begins to differ from mine again though when Zane goes on to applaud his brother for getting involved in land reclamation and recognizing his position as a leverage point.

In braiding, I realized my thoughts on ecoliteracy focus on larger abstract issues. I tend to approach it more as an academic exercise of looking at cause and effect or trying to locate those leverage points “where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything” (Meadows, 1999). While I believe that small actions like individual recycling, gardening and other environmentally friendly initiatives have their place in ecoliteracy and do help, I cannot help but feel this can be like the child from the 1950’s ducking under their desk to protect themselves from an atomic bomb (i.e. there just giving themselves false comfort). Further, one could argue ecoliterate individuals may recycle, but not all people who recycle are ecoliterate (maybe they are just doing it to get their deposit back). For me, at the core of ecoliteracy there must be an understanding of the interconnectedness of systems (i.e. systems analysis) fostered through experience with nature and study. Only with this understanding, one can begin to investigate sustainability and leverage points to affect change.

Works Cited

http://www.derekhall.com/mutual-learning
https://seanhooperblog.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/dear-mom-a-tribute-to-an-individual-who-represents-ecoliteracy
https://zanemaze.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/eco-literacy-love-letter

Meadows, D. (1999) Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. Retrieved October 5, 2015, from http://www.donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system.

The Conquering Hero or How I Learned to Love the Smog

We’ve built our dams;

We’ve built our roads;

Those veins with blood of steel.

We’ve cleared the forests;

We’ve built our cities;

New forests of glass and steel.

We’ve plotted our fields;

We’ve trawled our seas;

For now everyone has a meal.

We’ve planted our flags;

We’ve melted our glaciers;

Now who wants to go kill a seal.

We’ve built our industries;

We’ve tapped our rivers;

Shouldn’t they more a shade of teal?

We’ve added carbon to our atmosphere;

We’ve polluted our planet;

This we cannot conceal.

We’ve conquered nature;

We live apart from our planet;

How does that makes us feel?

 

The paper I used for my journal was recovered from a discarded magazine wrapper; a magazine, amongst other things, that has helped in my ecological literacy throughout the years. In thinking about definitions to what ecological literacy is I drew a branching river system to inspire me in systems thinking. To understand the state of the river system, one needs to follow the flow upstream. The further one goes up stream, the more divergent points one finds. It becomes apparent that there are many sources that impact the main river. The volume of water can be affected by human phenomenon such as dams or by natural phenomenon such as diminishment of a feeder glacier or drought. The quality of water can be affected by both pollutants and fertilizers. All those things which affect the health of the river system affect that which subsist and utilize the river system. It’s all integrated and a thorough examination could fill volumes. From understanding of the river system it becomes apparent that human abuses can irrevocable damage the system both in the present and for the future. This made me reflect on Capra’s (2007) definition of ecological literacy: “understanding the principles of organization that have evolved in ecosystems over billions of years”. Only with knowledge of these principles can we begin to understand how to live sustainably in social, economic and environmental ways within our ecosystem; the earth.

 

References

Fritjof Capra, Sustainable Living, Ecological Literacy, & the Breath of Life (2007)

A lot of biodiversity in flora can be found in the backyards and fields of everyday life. I documented several major examples from my own backyard and by no means is this list exhaustive. In this exercise, I played the part of the botanist; something I was never required to do in my education as an economist. As an economist, environmental issues studied included sustainable fisheries and forestry management and market thresholds for sustainable and alternative energy sources. In order to maximize the economic value of these resources, one needed knowledge of fish breeding habits, tree growth rates, climate, geography, history, etc. This is not quite the interdisciplinary education proposed by David Orr (2004) twenty plus years ago in a speech, but perhaps his influence is being seen.
Orr’s reasoning for advancing environmental education is valid; a more holistic education will allow for better perspective and can only lead to better decision makers. Personally, I cannot help but think of the all those who contribute to environmental degradation who, even with environmental knowledge, would still gladly plow down forests and jungles. I am referring to peasant farmers who occupy the continents where so much of the current flora and fauna degradation is occurring. Orr has the benefit of being a Westerner with the ability to provide for himself and his family by essentially selling lessons and ideas. This detachment from the basic struggle of life has allowed him to place a value on the future near or the same as the present. The peasant farmers of the developing world do not have that luxury. The future discounts to zero quite quickly when one is starving. Any notions of environmentalism and even sustainability can seem superfluous. While education in better farming techniques may alleviate issues; will the yields outpace population growth? Further, how fine is the line between the benevolent western scientist and the paternalistic imperial governor? Another point raised, do the lessons of an environmental education really have meaning to the unemployed scientist, businessman or are they more like that peasant farmer, more concerned about their present well being than the biodiversity in their backyard?

References

David Orr , What is Education for? (2004)