The Failure of
Environmental Education
(And How We Can Fix It)
Charles Saylan and Daniel T. Blumstein
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2011 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Saylan, Charles, 1953—
The failure of environmental education (and how we can fix it) / Charles Saylan and Daniel T. Blumstein.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-26538-7 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN
978-0-520-26539-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Environmental education. I. Blumstein, Daniel
T. II. Title.
GE70.S29 2011
333.7071—dc22 2010040205
Manufactured in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100% post
consumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC recycled
certified and processed chlorine free. It is acid free,
Ecologo certified, and manufactured by BioGas energy.
Charlie: For Maddalena, with love, and Burbank,
with tennis ball
Dan: To David and Janice, my partners in
exploration and discovery
CONTENTS
4. Accountability and Institutional Mind-Set
5. The Needs of Environmentally Active Citizens
6. Between Awareness and Action
8. Consumption, Conservation, and Change
Appendix: Greening Schools for Alternative Education
PREFACE
There are noticeably fewer places these days where one can experience the immensity of nature, where one can feel alone and far from the societal order that humanity seems driven to impose on the random wilderness. It is harder to hear the wind howl across some distant ridge, as trees are fewer now, felled by ever-expanding and efficient industry. Not long ago, within the scope of the authors' personal memories, one might have ventured into the wilderness and found no trace of humans. Today, however, humanity's footprint is almost everywhere. Out in the woods are anonymous fences that mask the grand exfoliation of mining, hydroelectric plants, or oil pipelines. Gazing up from almost anywhere, one sees jet contrails filling the sky with the graffiti of human presence. Looking deeper into the natural world reveals changes in animal behavior and ecology caused by the long arm of anthropogenic effects, like the presence of human toxins in the fat of top predators that live in remote places where humans are never encountered. Even the wilderness areas our governments set aside for protection have diminished over the years under the prevailing belief that growth and development are synonymous with success.
From childhood, we each had the privilege of experiencing the freedom that roaming the wilderness offers, as hikers and mountaineers, as skiers and sailors, as biologists and teachers. That freedom sowed in us the seed of a profound respect for and love of nature. Our concept of nature was as immense as the outdoors, as vast as the horizon, as deep as outer space.
When we were young, we were taught that the population of our planet was just under three billion, a number that seemed incomprehensibly large to a fourth grader. In significantly less than a lifetime, however, the population has more than doubled and may soon double again. Sadly, the space we enjoyed as children is shrinking, and the wild unexplored places that inspired us so deeply are now mostly gone.
We have witnessed growth unprecedented in the history of our species and our planet, initially with a sense of pride and wonder at technologies that seemed like something out of science fiction. But as these advances became real and accessible, our wonder became clouded with uncomfortable foreboding. The irrepressible nature we enjoyed and had taken for granted seemed increasingly threatened by unlikely sources that, just a few years earlier, were touted as the cutting edge of humankind's progress. Industry, development, better living, travel, and consumerism, to name a few, started revealing their unforeseen ramifications. Nobody's fault, really. Something, we hoped, that could be addressed by focusing human ingenuity on the problems. After all, we all have an unwavering faith in our collective ability to solve problems by applying technology. Right?
But as time passed and we looked deeper into these issues, we found they were not just isolated problems easily corrected. We slowly began to believe that what was being uncovered was only the tip of an immense iceberg, the magnitude of which humanity still does not comprehend. And our faith