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Restrained and Progressive Environmental Education
CREE Seminar University of Bath 19/11/08
Morgan PhillipsBecomingGreen.co.uk
Talk structureHow and where we learn
The Environmental Education Infrastructure
Restrained Environmental Education
Progressive Environmental Education
Plural rationalities
Research findings
The Emergence of Progressive Environmental Education
If not a consumer economy then what?
How and where we learn
Free Choice Learners
Accidental Learners
You learn something new every day
Environmental Education Infrastructure (EEI)
Environmental Education Infrastructure (EEI)
The Guardian, 24th September 2008
Report on forthcoming paper by Stewart Barr et. al., (2009)
‘A holiday is still a holiday’
University of Exeter
‘the hard politics of the environment: climate change, soil loss, deforestation, the state of the oceans and the threats to biodiversity at large’(Foster, 2008, p. 12)
Action for Sustainable
DevelopmentGAP
Sustainable development
motivation
Knowledge of Sustainable
development
The Knowledge-Action Gap
Education for the environment is losing the battle with Education against the environment.
Environmental Education Infrastructure (EEI)
Restrained and Progressive Environmental Education
Restrained Environmental Education
Restrained Environmental Education
Sits within, does not adequately challenge and often embodies the consumerist, materialist culture that lies at the root of many social and environmental problems.
Progressive Environmental Education
Seeks to question the drivers of a consumer led economy directly with the aim of instigating a long term shift to a new sustainable culture.
Restrained Environmental Education sits within
a wider Progressive Environmental Education
‘Green living is largely something of a myth. There is this middle class environmentalism where being green is part of the desired image. But another part of the desired image is to fly off skiing twice a year. And the carbon savings they make by not driving their kids to school will be obliterated by the pollution from their flights.’
Stewart Barr
‘I recycle therefore I am green, I have low energy light bulbs therefore I am greener still, I drive a hybrid car therefore I am even greener.’
‘I am green, because I can afford it’
‘We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when creating them.’
Albert Einstein
‘Plural rationalities’
‘Plural rationalities’
Material Wealth =
Happiness
The following factors were all found to influence the design and delivery of environmental education:
Educators beliefs about how to approach environmental education
Expectations of educators employers
The availability of funding
Funding restrictions
The National Curriculum
The natural resources available to the educator
The expectations of the audience
The type of audience
Action for Sustainable
DevelopmentGAP
Sustainable development
motivation
Knowledge of Sustainable
development
The Knowledge-Action Gap
How green is green enough?
The role and potential for Progressive Environmental Education
Barriers to Progressive Environmental Education
Expectations of audience
Need for an audience
Remit of their job
The unavailability of funding
Lack of resources and inspiration.
Adam Curtis, BBC
What is the morality of the practice of encouraging housewives to be non-rational and impulsive in buying the family food?
What is the morality of the playing upon hidden weaknesses and frailties – such as our anxieties, aggressive feelings, dread of non-conformity, and infantile hangovers to sell products? Specifically, what are the ethics of businesses that shape campaigns designed to thrive on these weaknesses they have diagnosed?
What is the morality of manipulating small children even before they reach the age where they are legally responsible for their actions?
What is the morality of treating voters like customers, and child customers seeking father images at that?
What is the morality of exploiting our deepest sexual sensitivities and yearnings for commercial purposes?
What is the morality of appealing for our charity by playing upon our secret desires for self-enhancement?
What is the morality of developing in the public an attitude of wastefulness toward national resources by encouraging the ‘psychological obsolescence’ of products already in use?
What is the morality of subordinating truth to cheerfulness in keeping the citizen posted on the state of his nation?
(Packard, 1957, pp. 209-210)
The Affluenza Virus is a set of values which increase our vulnerability to emotional distress. It entails placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions, looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous.
(James, 2007, p. vii)
‘Perhaps the biggest obstacle to a materially lighter, well-being led economy is the current structural requirement for ever greater consumption’
(DEFRA, 2007, p. 10)
‘The challenge of sustainable development is to negotiate a path that dematerialises consumption without creating a downward spiral of increasing unemployment and poverty.’
(DEFRA, 2007, p. 10)
‘If not a consumer culture then what?’
‘Plural rationalities’
‘If not a consumer culture then what?’
