With the new wave of interest in the environment, will we finally give students the tools they
need to become environmentally literate citizens?
by Mike Weilbacher
n just a few months, high school seniors all around the
I
nomic ones. Have the past 40 years of environmental education
United States will walk proudly across stages, hoisting their
met Stapp’s challenge and created the environmentally literate
diplomas as they graduate from formal K–12 education. As
citizenry we need to negotiate the coming trade-offs?
their teachers, we’ll look on with some wistfulness, for the
world into which they are graduating—one of spiraling financial In a word, no.
crises coupled with huge international challenges—is vastly dif-
ferent from the one in which they started their senior year only
A typical high school student is aware of environmental
10 months ago.
issues, has discussed and debated climate change or rain forest
But wait, it gets worse. If you place your finger on the pulse
loss in some class sometime, and might have bumper-sticker
of the planet, this is what you’ll discover: global surface tem-
answers to lapel-pin questions. But do our students know where
peratures rising, glaciers
the trash goes when it leaves
melting, oceans warm-
their house? The leading
ing, sea levels rising, rain
source of greenhouse gas
forests burning, coral
emissions? Why we recycle?
reefs dying, old-growth
(Glass and aluminum, after
forests disappearing,
THE
all, are not rare resources.) If
deserts spreading, the
you ask a group of students
world’s population
what we can do to combat
increasing, and species
the warming trend, several
vanishing at the highest
WINDOW
will chime in that we need
rates since the extinction
to remove chlorofluoro-
of the dinosaurs.
carbons (CFCs) from hair
In short, the ecol-
spray. (Many high schoolers
ogy that underpins our
conflate global warming with
economy is also collaps-
INTO
ozone depletion and haven’t
ing. And the solutions to
been told that CFCs were
this challenge elude not
removed from the market 20
only most of our gradu-
years ago.)
ates, but also us—their
GREEN
My organization sur-
teachers, administrators,
veyed high school students
and parents.
on these questions and more
Will our gradu-
and discovered that although
ates be ready for these
students are overwhelm-
new realities? Will they
ingly “pro-environment,”
confidently stride into
they possess remarkably little
this world as college
information about breaking
students, workers, voters, consumers—in short, as competent,
environmental issues. One small example: We asked them to
caring adults capable of making good decisions on the pressing
name one bird they can identify by song. The leading answer?
issues of the day?
None. If local birds disappear from the landscape because of ex-
tinction, or arrive three weeks late because of warming climates,
Environmental Ignorance
it’s possible that no one will notice.
Oh, there are numerous bright spots in the environmental
Forty years ago, in the first issue of the Journal of Environ-
education movement, but progress is hardly keeping up with the
mental Education, William B. Stapp (1969) defined the goal of the
increasingly urgent issues that face us today. When Stapp coined
nascent field of environmental education as producing a citizenry
his definition four decades ago, the United States was riding a
that “is knowledgeable concerning the biophysical environment
wave of interest in the environment triggered by the Santa Bar-
and its associated problems, aware of how to help solve these
bara oil spill, Ohio’s Cuyahoga River catching fire, Lake Erie be-
problems, and motivated to work toward their solution” (p. 30).
ing declared biologically dead, and charismatic birds like eagles
Today, a new U.S. president actively seeks approval from
and peregrine falcons vanishing. As we addressed these issues,
the American people for repairing the economic collapse while
the wave crested, and interest in ecology quickly ebbed.
preventing the ecological one. There will be fierce pressure on
Today, even though an interest in green ideas is resurging,
President Obama to forego environmental projects in lieu of eco-
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Clearing - 2009 Compendium Edition http://www.clearingmagazine.org Page 5
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