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Environmental education: powerlessness, terror and hope!
Dr. Richard Kool!Royal Roads [email protected]!
outline!
• unintended outcomes of environmental education!
• psychology of loss and despair!
• terror management!
• hope and action!
… We are figuratively and literally sick and tired of a mis-development of America that diminishes daily the quality of the human experience: water pollution; air pollution; soil erosion; forest, range and wetland deterioration; waning wildlife; urban sprawl; pre-empted open spaces; vanishing wilderness; landscapes scarred by highways, litter, noise, and blight... (Schoenfeld, 1971, p. 1) !
Environmental education grows out of a sense of
loss!
The dark emotions!• grief!
• terror!
• despair!
• depression!
Loss!of confidence in the world!
of people!of peace!of place!
of meaning!
We live in two worlds!
" We live in the EE world of joy, discovery, wonder, diversity, abundance, happiness, friendship, hopefulness, of light!
" We live in the EE world of extinction, pollution, mutation, contamination, aggression, injustice, despair, of dark!
" “As educators, despair is not our business” Edmund O’Sullivan, Eco-Ed conference, 1994!
David Sobel"Ecophobia, 1996!
Comments about...!Earth week
school!Non Earth week
school!
Concern for the environment (pollution, extinction….)!
18! 0!
Appreciation for the environment! 7! 9!
Appreciation for families! 1! 14!
David Sobel"Ecophobia, 1996!
• “The result… was a kind of despondency among the children in the Earth Week classroom and a submerging of children’s natural interests in a sea of problems”!
Premature Abstraction Breeds Biophobia"
David Sobel"Ecophobia, 1996!
• In West Germany... “as a result of the curriculum initiative, education officials found that students felt hopeless and disempowered. The problems were seemingly so widespread and beyond their control that the students tended to turn away from, rather than face up to, participating in local attempts at problem solving.”!
Bad things happen...!• How do we explain these things??!
• We can see them as due to events outside of our control, external to us, that might happen again or might not... !
• Or do we see them as our own fault, internal to us, our responsibility, we’re to blame...!
3P’s of learned helplessness!
Personal - See themselves as the problem; internalized the problem.!Pervasive - See the problem affecting all aspects of life.!Permanent - See the problem as unchangeable!
“The situation is hopeless and I am helpless”!
“the formation, maintenance, disruption and renewal of attachments give rise to the many of the most intense emotions that humans experience”!
Not only with people do we have bonds that can be ruptured, resulting in the experience of loss, but also with!
Intangibles!Places!
Things!
Attachment!
Response to separation!
• Protest!
• Despair!
• Detachment or denial!
• and we learn to be helpless!
End of part 1!
Ernest Becker!
• "The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity- designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man."!
Terror Management Theory!
• “... views the self as an essentially defensive construction that functions to protect people from a deeply rooted fear of death that is an inherent by-product of the sophisticated cognitive abilities that make us human”.!
Terror Management Theory!
Mortality salience hypothesis!
Initial reactions to TMT!
• American Psychologist editors: !
• “I have no doubt that these ideas are of absolutely no interest to any psychologist, alive or dead.”!
• TMT theorists reply: !
• “We had been hoping that at least the dead might have shown some interest”!
After 9/11, President Bush said...!
" “We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don’[t conduct business, where people don’t shop... Mrs. Bush and I want to encourage Americans to go out shopping.”!
" “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping... Within a few weeks of Sept. 11- and in the teeth of a recession- ordinary Americans shook off their gloom and opened their wallets.” (8 Sept 02, San Francisco Chronicle p. G1)!
Worldviews!
• “A worldview consists of the principles we acquire to make sense of the world around us. Young people learn these principles, including values, traditions, and customs, from myths, legends, stories, family, community, and examples set by community leaders.”!
• Kawagley, A.O. 1995. A Yupiaq worldview: A
What do worldviews do?!
As environmental educators, we often
challenge worldviews without
ever first acknowledging that
we all even have worldviews!
What is self esteem?!• “Self-esteem is the feeling that one is an object of primary value in a meaningful universe. .. Individuals sustain self-esteem by maintaining faith in a cultural worldview and living up to the standards of value”!
• “A diverse array of classic and contemporary psychological theories converge on the notion that people have a strong and pervasive need for self-esteem”!
What does self esteem do?!
“People need self-esteem because it is the central psychological mechanism for protecting individuals from the anxiety that awareness of their vulnerability and mortality would otherwise” !
An anxiety buffer!
" High self-esteem provides a buffer against anxiety. "
• Experimentally boosting a subjects self-esteem reduces their self-reported anxiety when shown graphic movie depictions of death or in anticipation of electrical shocks!
" Threats to oneʼ self esteem are likely to increase anxiety"
• When ones self-esteem is threatened, one will try to defend a positive image of oneself, which reduces anxiety. !
Reminders of death!
" Reminders of death, mortality salience, generally increases anxiety!
• Increased anxiety is accompanied by increased defense of one’s worldview!! particularly true amongst people with low self-esteem or people high on a dogmatism scale; !! people with high self-esteem seem to have enough of a buffer against regular anxiety!
Defending your worldview!
" Worldview defense can either involve !
! criticizing others’ worldviews, or worse or !
! praising others who uphold your worldview!
" What happens when we put children in conflict with their parents worldviews?!
Evidence for TMT...
" Increased attraction to those who explicitly praise aspects of the cultural worldview and decreased attraction to those who criticize it (America, love it or leave it)!
" In-group favouritism towards, and stereotyping and prejudicial behaviour and avoidance of, outgroup members (Christians and Jews)!
" Aggression against those who challenge one’s belief or hold different attitudes (hot sauce studies)!
in/tolerance " !"#$%&'$( )%&'*+,* '+,#*%)*) )-./*,$)’ '+$"&*#%+,* $"0%#1) 2*"2&* 3"&1'+4 1'55*#*+$ %$$'$-1*)6
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• “:" $3* *;$*+$ $3%$ µ"#$%&'$( )%&'*+,* µ"$'7%$*) %13*#*+,* $" "+*<) 0"#&17'*0, $3*+ '$ 5"&&"0) $3%$ &'.*#%&) 03" $3'+= %."-$ 1*%$3 0"-&1 .*,"µ* µ"#* $"&*#%+$ "5 1'))'µ'&%# "$3*#)” 6
Where does this lead us!• We are strongly attached to maintaining a sense of meaning !
• Putting the weight of the world on children’s shoulders is problematic regarding their self esteem and anxiety!
• Reminding students of death-related topics should increase their anxiety and make many increase their attachment to their cultural worldview!
• So don’t focus on doom and gloom... focus on beauty and wonder and hope and change!
Integrating loss into our lives!
" Recognize the Loss!
" Release the Emotions of Grief!
" Develop New Skills!
" Reinvest Emotional Energy in the Present!
Creating meaning in life: Victor Frankel!
" “… by creating a work or by doing a deed.” !
" “… experiencing something or encountering someone”!
" “… even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself”!
" Or as Ghandi taught, be the change that you want to see in the world!
• “Don’t cry, you idiot… live or die, but don’t poison everything”
• From Herzog
• Saul Bellow (Nobel Prize in Literature)
We are not alone...!
" We can know that there are others with the same worries and fears, and shared worries and fears are easier to carry!
" We can share our worries and fears and through being heard, can be held by our community!
To speak of sorrow!works upon it!moves it from its!crouched place barring!the way to and from the soul’s hall…!Denise Levertov (1967)!
We can come together...!
" Humans are a communal species... the individualism so promoted by western society can be replaced by community!
" We are individuals in relationship to all, and in those relationships, and with our relations, we can find hope!
" We need to focus on the 4 C’s: “caring, concern, connection and community”!
" We are stronger as citizens than we are as consumers!
We live in community...!
" As citizens, we come to community!
" Community is made up of two words and two potential meanings!
" com munis- with others!
" com unis- with unity!
" In community we can work for the common good!
We act together and individually...
" We can know that we don’t have to do everything, but we can do something... it may not be enough individually, but it is what we can do!
" We can always say “here I am”... !
" We can always say “here we are”...!
Those who will not reason! Perish in the act:!Those who will not act! Perish for that reason.! W.H. Auden!
Moving on...!
• “We are not here to get our needs met. We are here to serve the world.”!
• Greenspan, M. (2003). Healing through the dark emotions: The wisdom of grief, fear and despair. Boston: Shambala.!
• And we are here to serve each other!
The Great Work!• “... the Great Work of a people is the
work of all the people. No one is exempt.”!
• “We cannot doubt that we have been given the intellectual vision, the spiritual insight, and even the physical resources we need to carrying out the transition that is demanded of these times, transition from the period when humans were a disruptive force on the planet Earth to the period when humans become present to the planet in a manner that is mutually enhancing.”!
Rogers, M., & Tough, A. (1996). Facing the future is not for wimps. Futures, 28(5), 491-496.
Facing the future is not for wimps!
Cognitive (learning) stage!
Emotional stage!
Stage of the “soul”!
Empowerment stage!
Action stage!Paradigm battle!
grief, anger, depression!elation, hopefulness, courage!
Existential crisis!
Responsibility and commitment !
Doing what we can do, where we are, with what
we have!
Rabbi Tarfon said...!
The day is short, the task is great, the laborers are lazy, the wage is abundant and the master is urgent.!
It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task. Yet, you are not free to desist from it.!
Rabbi Akiva said...!
• If I am not for myself, who shall be for me?!
• But if I am for myself alone, what am I?!
• And if not now, when?!
