Just a reminder for today’s blog entry. As a continuation from yesterday’s discussion on how knowledge without action is not the type of education that will enrich students’ lives, I want to re-post the Nasa saying printed in Gruner’s (2010) article on solidarity and life projects.
Nasa saying: “Words without Actions are Empty; Actions without Words are Blind; But Words and Actions outside the Spirit of Community are Death.” (Gruner, 2010, p. 96).
To me, “Words and Actions outside the Spirit of Community are Death” (Gruner, 2010, p. 96) indicate that we must produce and use knowledge (in other words, educate) responsibly and prudently. This brings me to Orr’s next two principles...
Orr’s third principle for rethinking education: “knowledge carries with it the responsibility to see that it is well used in the world” (p. 13).
When I re-read Orr’s (1991) third principle and think about the connection between knowledge and responsibility, I am immediately reminded of the precautionary principle.
“In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” (UNEP, 1992).
And this quote:
“Cogito ergo sum” (“ I think therefore I am”)
- Descartes
As the species on this planet capable of “intelligent thought” (by “intelligent thought” I mean the ability to imagine and communicate these imaginations), we as humans must carry the responsibility that comes with our big brains. Orr (1991) argues that we have let our big brains get away with us and hence, “monsters of technology” (p. 13) such as Chernobyl and the Exxon Valdez occurred and no persons or parties were held responsible.
A possible method for putting Orr’s (1991) third principle into action is Cheney and Weston’s (1999) idea of an ethics-based epistemology. Cheney and Weston (1999) argue that by putting ethics before knowledge allows acceptance that we do not know everything while giving a “nonexclusive consideration of everything: people, bacteria, rocks, everything, insofar as we can.” (p. 120). They offer this epistemology as an alternative to the dominant paradigm of putting knowledge before ethics (Cheney and Weston, 1999). For example, in the dominant paradigm, we as humans base how we treat a particular animal on what we have learned about that animal and its value to us (Cheney and Weston, 1999). If we put ethics first, we literally put ourselves in that animal’s shoes and show it courtesy regardless of what we know or do not know (Cheney and Weston, 1999). This also allows us to invite knowledge rather than seek it (Cheney and Weston, 1999).
I like how Cheney and Weston’s (1999) idea of an ethics-based epistemology extends Orr’s (1991) ideas on knowledge and responsibility beyond human knowledge and responsibility for other humans. By extending ethics to a “nonexclusive consideration of everything” (Cheney and Weston, 1999, p. 120), connecting knowledge to responsibility becomes much more meaningful and shifts paradigms from an anthropocentric view to a view that simply invites knowledge of others.
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Orr’s (1991) fourth principle for rethinking education: “we cannot say that we know something until we understand the effects of this knowledge on real people and their communities” (p. 13).
This principle for rethinking education reminds me of the article by Raudseppe-Hearne et al. (2010), titled: “Untangling the environmentalist’s paradox: why is human well-being increasing as ecosystem services degrade?” In this article, Raudseppe-Hearne et al. (2010) present four hypotheses regarding why the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), “a comprehensive study of the world’s resources, found that declines in the majority of ecosystem services have been accompanied by steady gains in human well-being at the global scale.” (MA, 2005 as cited in Raudseppe-Hearne et al., 2010).
These hypotheses are:
1) Human well-being is actually declining, the way well-being is measured is flawed (Radseppe-Hearne et al., 2010).
2) “Provisioning ecosystem services, such as food production” (p. 578) are much more important to human well-being than other ecosystem services. Therefore, as long as ecosystem services such as food production increase, it will compensate decrease in other ecosystem services (Radseppe-Hearne et al., 2010).
3) Technology has allowed humans to substitute ecosystem services with innovations (Radseppe-Hearne et al., 2010).
4) There is a time lag between ecosystem degradation and decline of human-well being. We have not yet experienced the full extent of the effects of ecosystem degradation (Radseppe-Hearne et al., 2010).
While the authors discount the first hypothesis and propose that the second, third and fourth hypotheses are more plausible, I disagree with their findings using evidence from Orr’s (1991) work. Orr (1991) presents the case of Youngstown, Ohio, where the economic “bottom line” was regarded in high importance. However, community bonds were destroyed and social problems developed due to disregard for “the bottom line for society” (Orr, 1991, p. 13). Clearly, an analysis of well-being that “did not access aspects of well-being that have not been measured globally, such as psychological health, social solidarity or cultural change” (Radseppe-Hearne et al., 2010) does not take into account factors of well-being that are arguably more critical than economic well-being.
I understand that Radseppe-Hearne et al. (2010) were presenting their data scientifically and they identify their limitations well. However, measuring human well-being mostly using elements related to economic capital (such as GDP and education- and here I ask, education of what kind?!) is a flawed method for measuring well-being (Radseppe- Hearne et al., 2010; Orr, 1991).
To say we really understand this concept of well-being, we must go beyond factors defined by economic well-being and truly understand the realities of life for real people in real communities (Orr, 1991).
To conclude tonight with another quote from David Orr (1991)...
Orr (1991) argues that “education is no guarantee of decency, prudence, or wisdom” (p. 8). I agree.
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