The circle of life the evolution of the dominant human relationship with the earth, what this means for environmental education, human development, and the human condition.
Abstract: This paper explores the argument that Ontario's abdication or absence of environmental education is the result of a series of developments in the evolution of dominant culture and the relationship it has developed with the Earth. It examines how human relationships with the Earth changed since the beginning of time and that the most significant changes occurred during the domestication of animals and plants. These changes sent the Earth/human relationship on a negative path. Industrialization and the onset of the digital technology made these changes move even faster. The paper explains the Environmental Movement as evidence of a need for a healthier relationship with the Earth. Aspects of Indigenous epistemologies and their similarities to early Neolithic cultures bring forth the idea that the primacy of ancestral knowledge in the lives of people living on traditional territories is the distinguishing characteristic that creates the healthiest relationship with the Earth. It details research that supports that Indigenous people have deep spiritual and emotional connections to the Earth where one's growth into adulthood and becoming fully human means truly growing the nature of the spirit in relation to the environment. The paper explains that there may be connections between incomplete psychological developments of individuals due to the ever increasing disconnection with the natural world and that this condition is the consequence of being educated. An examination of environmental education in Ontario ensues with examples to prove it has abdicated the responsibility of Earth learning entirely. The paper concludes with the thought that the way out of the contradictions of environmental education includes a return to a mythopoetically and experientially based spiritual educational praxis and to do this, there needs to be an understanding of Indigenous metaphysics. In that hope, it concludes that it is time to give experientially authentic environmental education back to its originators since the practice is not being conducted in ways that fully develop us humans for sustaining ourselves on the planet.
Inhaltsverzeichnis :
prefaceintroductionChapter oneEarly human relations to earth - Origins on enivironmental learning Paleolithic age Neolithic age quality of attention place place and space place and gender duality food patters material culture domescationindustralizationdigital age root metaphors subjektivityindigenous ways perception landscape and mapping storytellingeducation and the earth overwie of Western education enviornmental education in Ontario schools early schooling and environmental education current issues in environmental education in Ontario green team forest vision Chapter tworoots infancy childhood adolescene young adulthood closing thoughts conclusion
Mobil →
↑ http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/thesescanada/vol2/002/MR29587.PDF