Teaching Students Ecological Literacy In the Secondary English Classroom
In today's world, we are bombarded with industry, economic advancement, and progressivism with new technology. As our world becomes more high tech and produces more products for our consumer world, we may soon face many environmental problems, due to our over-consumption of resources and our excessive, industrial lifestyles. Within all curriculums, I find it highly important to address these issues concerning environmental awareness as well as advocate environmental activism. When many educators think of ways to implement ecological literacy in their classrooms, they tend to find it challenging, and are unable to integrate it into the curriculum. However, students can be taught to think in ecological terms in a plethora of ways. Through researching current methods of integration of ecological literacy in the secondary English classroom and through compilation of my own approaches to these issues, I offer a great proposition for prospective educators like myself. This paper will examine what ecological literacy is, what ways this integration can be successfully achieved, and why it is important to integrate it into the English curriculum.
Ecological literacy is teaching students to view the world around them from an environmental perspective, examine their own practices in relation to nature and society's toll upon the earth. For students to become ecologically literate, they must examine social issues on a local and global level in order to develop their own model of individual responsibility to preservation and respect of our world. As time passes and newer technology develops, students sometimes become more involved i...
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... Educators in all subjects, must begin to integrate environmental education, promoting ecological literacy for young adults to promote the sustainability of society and the beautiful world around us.
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An ideal green citizen lives a normal life while making sustainable choices. However, Ecotopia and the United States’ educational systems do not contrive their students to achieve such ideals. In an Ecotopian school, students learn about the Earth but are not educated about other subjects. Vice versa, in American schools, students learn all subjects but none specific to sustainability. To ultimately prepare the youth for the future, there is a need of equilibrium of both systems in which students are educated in all subjects with knowledge of the eco-system. Having a well-rounded education with specificity of sustainability, students can adjudicate their own “green” ideals and act upon them in which they are able to establish new solution to unsustainable issues.
An integrated holistic approach to teaching and learning should allow children to make connections to the natural world. Practitioners should adapt to children’s ability of learning and their understanding of the natural environment and the connections they have between
ABSTRACT: I explore the concept of literacy and the role it might play in environmental ethics. One of the goals of environmental ethics is to describe and contribute to the creation of an ecologically responsible culture. The creation of such a culture requires the development of knowledge and abilities that will help sustain such a culture. Since education is one of the key institutions for instilling values and world views, it is important for environmental philosophers to think about the institutionalization of environmental theories in terms of their implications for the environmentally literate person. I argue that attention to literacy is significant for two reasons. First, it provides one way of evaluating the differences between competing environmental philosophies. Second, it raises the important question of what kind of person is required to carry out a particular vision of environmental responsibility. By addressing the issue of education and literacy, philosophers interested in environmental ethics can help create a vision of citizens who have democratically internalized and integrated environmental values and priorities rather than having them imposed from above.
Mary Oliver's (Clinebell, 1996, p.188) poem has a lot to say about the relatively new approach to conservation called ecopsychology. Ecopsychology combines the human element from psychology, with the study of how biological systems work together from ecology. A more in depth explanation of ecopsychology is that it seeks to help humans experience themselves as an integral part of nature (Strubbe 1997). When this is accomplished, humans can proceed to commit to "helping heal the earth, as well as healing ourselves" (Strubbe 1997, p. 293). In the past, environmental action has consisted of scaring and shaming those who over consume or do not recycle, which proved to be quite ineffective. Ecopsychology, in contrast, attempts to create positive and affirming motivations, derived from a bond of love and loyalty to nature (Bayland, 1995). Before tackling the principles, religious aspects, therapy, actions and education included in ecopsychology, it is essential to unde...
"Sands of Time." Short History of Southeast Asia. Destination Asia, Oct. 2003. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.
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Through this portion of class readings and discussions, we have sought deeper meaning and understanding of philosophies of individuals and organizations that revolve around the fundamental aspects and notions of deep ecology and eco-activism. These associations offer more views and attitudes on how an individual and society can create and maintain a kinship and positive influence with the natural environment.
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Ecocriticism asserts that humans are “peoples of 'place'” (Bressler 231), our lives defined by the environment that we inhabit and the necessities of survival that are dictated by nature. The more we recognize this innate and deep connection—for example, through the reading and analyzing of the nature-human dynamic in literature—the stronger and healthier this relationship will become. We as humans will recognize our dependence on the earth instead of our dominance over it; we will recognize ourselves as “guardians” and learn how to better appreciate and protect the environment for future generations of authors and poets to continue to explore.
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Environmental philosophy tries to make sense of the unexamined values, assumptions and ideologies behind humanities treatment of the environment and, in doing so, aims at helping to elicit an effective human response to related issues (Curry, 2011). Environmental philosophy, has gone beyond being merely an academic pursuit, now requiring the world’s population take moral responsibility for the damages caused by their industrial advances on natural systems.
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