Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern WorldThe most important discoveries of the 20th century exist not in the realm of science, medicine, or technology, but rather in the dawning awareness of the earth s limits and how those limits will affect human evolution. Humanity has reached a crossroad where various ecological catastrophes meet what some call sustainable development. While a great deal of attention has been given to what governments, corporations, utilities, international agencies, and private citizens can do to help in the transition to sustainability, little thought has been given to what schools, colleges, and universities can do. Ecological Literacy asks how the discovery of finiteness affects the content and substance of education. Given the limits of the earth, what should people know and how should they learn it? |
Contents
The Problem of Sustainability | 3 |
Two Meanings of Sustainability | 23 |
A Tale of Two Systems Sustainability in International Perspective | 41 |
Fragments of Strategy | 61 |
Education | 81 |
Ecological Literacy | 85 |
The Liberal Arts the Campus and the Biosphere An Alternative to Blooms Vision of Education | 97 |
A Prerequisite to the Great Books of Allan Bloom A Syllabus for Ecological Literacy | 109 |
What is Education For? | 141 |
Is Environmental Education an Oxymoron? | 149 |
What Knowledge? For What Purposes? | 153 |
Having Failed to Manage Ourselves We Will Now Manage the Planet? An Opinion from the Back Forty | 157 |
What Good is a Rigorous Research Agenda if You Dont Have a Decent Planet to Put it On? Apologies to Thoreau | 163 |
Food Alchemy and Sustainable Agriculture | 167 |
Epilogue | 181 |
Notes | 185 |
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Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World David W. Orr Limited preview - 1991 |
Common terms and phrases
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