Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World Book

Advisory: Most of the reviews posted for this title appear to actually be for Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World by Michael K. Stone (Editor), David W. Orr (Editor), Fritjof Capra (Preface). The book with Orr as single author is a collection of his essays from the mid-'90s. At the time I initially read it, I would have given it 5 stars. Orr is a good human being and a brilliant thinker, committed and wise. It's just that I no longer already-agree with much of his perspective, so I find it less convincing than I did before.

Some of his interesting observations that are relevant to my current work:

"Education in the modern world was designed to further the conquest of nature and the industrialization of the planet. It tended to produce unbalanced, underdimensioned people tailored to fit the modern economy. Postmodern education must have a different agenda, one designed to heal, connect, liberate, empower, create, and celebrate. Postmodern education must be life-centered" (x). This is the kind of broad statement with which I would have wholeheartedly concurred at one time, and which strikes me as utterly absurd now. Certainly we have socioeconomic and environmental problems. But our culture *is* significantly focused on healing: life spans are increasing almost everywhere, and people survive illnesses that they simply didn't ten or fifty or a hundred years ago. Poverty is decreasing around the world, as is violence overall. No, things are not perfect. But to deny the good things modernity has brought now strikes me as incomprehensible.

This was interesting: "'Schooling' is what happens in school and colleges. 'Training,' the inculcation of rote habit, is how one instructs an animal. 'Learning' is what can happen throughout life for those willing to risk it . . . we have all observed the [anomaly of] the highly schooled and heavily degreed fool, and a person lacking intellectual pedigree who lives with dignity, skill, intelligence, and magnanimity. . . . Schooling has to do with the ability to master basic functions that can be measured by tests. Learning has to do with matters of judgment, and with living responsibly and artfully, which cannot be measured so easily" (xi).