Richard Kanh’s article was very precise and convincing when it came to various arguments about destroying the environment. At the beginning of his article, he states that “a threat to either the organism or its environment is a movement towards the ecology of death” (1). His point being that if an organism is threatened, than the environment and vice versa. The reality of humans’ actions on our environment are made known with this sudden realization
What struck the most interesting to me was this environmental education. For one, I had never heard of such a thing. Secondly, it seems to help in other aspects of education such as social science and mathematics. I was fascinated when reading this. At first I was extremely skeptical about this so called Zoo School where “ high school-aged juniors and seniors attend school on the zoo grounds, treating the institution and a nearby park as an experiential learning lab where they conduct independent studies and weave environmental themes into their curricular work and projects” (7). The whole concept behind this school is that these students are actually learning HOW to do these specific tasks instead of just learning about them. It’s an education system like this that can save our environment. It’s all about the up and coming generation because the generation that is going to continue our efforts here on Earth. I personally think that all schools should implement this kind of education especially in an environmental crisis such as this.
Khan’s article was very affective in that it posed a lot of great ideas with factual background to support it. His statistics, such as “1.2 billion people live on less than $1 per day and nearly 3 billion live on less than $2 per day” (4), really make you think about how much the world is in trouble. It really makes me want to help society and help the environment succeed.
Source: http://richardkahn.org/writings/ecopedagogy/towardsecopedagogy.pdf
Source: http://richardkahn.org/writings/ecopedagogy/towardsecopedagogy.pdf
I hadn't thought of environmental education before reading this article either. I was in the same boat as you, being skeptical of the "zoo school" however, it seems like a smart thing to do in the end. But it'll only have an impact if everyone does it because if only a small percentage of the population knows how to do these specific tasks, then the entire environment is relying on those few people which is not going to work. We need everyone to contribute to a sustainable environment-- not just the people who are the most educated on the subject.
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