back to survival skills and final thoughts

Back to survival skills...

So, should we teach survival skills? I think we should, but we also need to be prudent in doing so. Clearly, adapting Neil Strauss’ experiences in survival training for young school children is ludicrous (although some may argue it is not). However, perhaps a certain kind of survival skill education is valuable to environmental education in responding to the ecological crisis.

Here, I will connect David Orr’s (1991) principles for rethinking education to survival skill education by speaking of my own experiences of camping with my family as a child. Really, “camping” meant setting up tents in provincial campgrounds with flush toilets, hot showers and grocery stores thirty minutes away. However, I believe that these are some of the experiences in nature that have led me, a “bubble-wrapped” suburban girl, to my passion for the environment. To me, making a fire, pitching a tent and catching fish for dinner are "survival skills”, even though I was not completely disconnected from city life.

Weston (2004) speaks of Driver Education as a model for environmental education because it relates to “larger personal and social practice, shared by parents and peers, already familiar in all manner of ways, and a practice that further enables their own growing independence and adulthood” (p. 36). Driver Education is a rite of passage for many teenagers (Weston, 2004). For me, being allowed to help build the fire at camp when I was old enough was an important rite of passage.

Learning the fundamental survival skill of making fire taught me cooperation with others and allowed me to feel confident and competent. This is consistent with Orr’s (1991) second principle for rethinking education.

Further, older children and my father, who showed me how to make the fire, acted as my role models, telling stories of how they played in the woods as children and their connection to children. This is consistent with Orr’s (1991) fifth principle for rethinking education.

Not only was I taught how to build the fire, but also how to put out a fire and the consequences (for other people and our environment) of leaving a fire unattended. This taught me responsibility and consideration, which is a lesson consistent with Orr’s (1991) third and fourth principles.

Of course, we built these fires outdoors, using materials from our immediate surroundings. The learning was hands on, not lecture style. Therefore, this is consistent with Orr’s (1991) first and sixth principles.

Final thoughts...

Steve, what your course has taught me most is that there are many theories out there about environmental education and no one theory is necessarily “right”. It is crucial for environmental educators to consistently challenge the status quo and trust their creativity while maintaining connections to local values and knowledge. Sometimes it may be difficult but, given the ecological crisis, it is necessary to push on.