Education and the Environment

Gregory A. Smith teaches in the Education Department at the College of Rural Alaska, University of Alaska.

"The work combines a sense of vision and practicality and touches on the major issue of the conceptual needs and limitations of comtemporary education." — Betty Reardon, Teachers College, Columbia University"While others flail at the symptoms, berating the scholastic inadequacies and outrageous injustices of America's schools, Gregory Smith goes to the heart of the matter. Our schools reflect us, our whole world view of competition and material growth, that is destroying our planet and ourselves. Step-by-step, Smith shows how we came to this impasse, how our schools reinforce it. Then, just as logically, he shows us the way out, to a saner future. By changing what we teach and how we teach it, we can produce happy, wise children, and a sustainable society. The blueprints are all here! Will we be smart enough to use them? If enough people read this book, we might just do it." — Mary E. Clark, Drucie French Cumbie Professor of Conflict Resolution, George Mason University"Gregory Smith recognizes matters of global environmental change that are hardly thought of at all in most education circles — that is, the recognition that environmental changes will force societal changes that the schools must adapt to and prepare their students to participate in. The insight of the author that our schools have a hidden curriculum that supports the modern capitalistic/industrial society which is itself slipping away and will inevitably transform as bio-geo-chemical change transforms the way the world works. We are now training our children to live in a world that cannot be sustained and will inevitably become something different. My great concern is that Smith's message is so ahead of its time that it will be ignored or rejected." — Lester W. Milbrath, Director, Research Program in Environment and Society, State University of New York at Buffalo

• Acknowledgments 1. Changing Conditions—Changing Schools 2. Modernization and the Rejection of Interdependence 3. Schools and the Transmission of the Modern/Industrial Worldview 4. A Sustainable Worldview 5. Shaping Schools for a Sustainable Society 6. Schools for At-Risk Youth: A Starting Point for Educational Change 7. Strategies for Developing Schools for Sustainability and Mutual Support Notes Bibliography Index