Working title

Working title: Educating the whole child / Environmental Education / Killing Descarte 

Education, when considered for the role it plays within a culture, serves most basically as a right of passage. A means by which the values and norms, along with knowledge, are passed on to the next generation. The prevailing values within our western society, those of consumerism and materialism (in the lay and philosophical sense) have led us to an environmental crisis. This crisis, which threatens to grow into ever bigger proportions can only be solved with a shift in the consciousness of society.

… this means that we need to bring the psychological dimension into our discussions about the environmental crisis. After all, the human psyche is the source of the crisis as well as our only hope for viable ways through it. The environmental crisis is a crisis of consciousness. 

Chalquist (2007)

The origins of this way of thinkning can be traced back to Descarte and the mind body dualism he created within Western thought

Cartesian dualism has left a heavy legacy in terms of how we think about ourselves, so that we treat humans as minds within bodies rather than mind/body unities. … Related to this is a dualism that is embedded in how we think of children in schools; we focus on the soundness of the mind, with the sound body treated as an afterthought.

(Paechter (2004)

Thus educating the ‘whole child’ involves more than a transmission of knowledge and skills. The learner must create meaning for themselves, not only as a rational mind, but also as a being, an organism in the world. 

Although education has traditionally focused on the development of skills and acquiring knowledge, the cornerstone of any educational system is the initiation of members into the society and the creation of a ‘whole’ person. Noddings (2005) here reminds us of an important aspect of what an educational system should strive to produce, happy individuals;

Great thinkers have associated happiness with such qualities as a rich intellectual life, rewarding human relationships, love of home and place, sound character, good parenting, spirituality, and a job that one loves. We incorporate this aim into education not only by helping our students understand the components of happiness but also by making classrooms genuinely happy places.

Schooling, while cognitively challenging and growing children also has the dual role of initiating young human beings into the society. This includes learning the norms and values of the culture, what is valued and what is not. Thus there can be little separation between the type of individual we require schools to produce, and the wider society as a whole. The traditional conflict theory of schooling would argue that there is a direct correspondence between the arrangement of schools and society.

…until society is fundamentally changed, there is little hope of real school reform.

(Sadovnik, A. R., Cookson, P. W. & Semel, S. F., 2006)

Thus the schooling system serves the greater ideology of the society. Our Western, capitalist, consumer driven culture requires a constant input of producers and consumers.

The environmental crisis we face can only be solved through a change in the overall ‘zeitgeist’ of our society. I would argue the role, or rather responsibility of the education system, which serves to tutor new members of the society is to counter this consumer mind-set which has led us to this point.

Environmental education should involve more than simply knowledge regarding the issues we currently face regarding the degradation of our environment. Real change in this area requires a fundamental shift in the current world view. The roots of this worldview can also be traced back to philosophical dualism, a view of the mind, and consequently man as separate from nature.

Thus what is required as a society is a re-examination of the ideologies which have brought us to this point. Although capitalism has most definitely fuelled technological development, our current linear system of production is quite simply not sustainable on a planet of limited resources.

Bibliography

Chalquist, C. (2007) Speech delivered at "Voices for Change," organized
by students at Sonoma State University.

Noddings, N. (2005) What does it mean to educate the whole child? Educational Leadership, 63(1).

Paechter, C. F. (2004) “Mens Sana in Corpore Sano”: Cartesian dualism and the marginalisation of sex education, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 25:3, 309-320.

Reveley, J. (2013) Enhancing the Educational Subject: cognitive capitalism, positive psychology and well-being training in schools. Policy Futures in Education, 11(5).

Sadovnik, Alan R & Cookson, Peter W & Semel, Susan F., 1941- (2006). Exploring education : an introduction to the foundations of education (3rd ed). Pearson/Allyn & Bacon, Boston.

Weber, M. (2002). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: and other writings. Penguin.