Get past the jargon, and you’ll see the point of the course is to convince
It began innocently in 2009 as a campus "conversation," but will extend much further: “In response to President Gee’s signing of the University President’s Climate Commitment [Scarlet, Gray and Green] last April (2008), the [Humanities] Institute initiated a campus-wide conversation about environmental citizenship, drawing together faculty, staff and students interested in advancing the discussion of sustainability and environmental values at the university. The initiative seeks broad-based involvement [and probably federal grant money] aimed at raising environmental awareness and embedding concepts and practices more deeply in the fabric of university life.”
Since it’s tough to get natural resources, energy, architecture, biology, and agriculture into an English curriculum, just merge English (reading and writing) into geography.
English 597.03 / Geography 597.03 offers students an opportunity to reflect on the skills and knowledge needed to act responsibly as environmental citizens. We will focus on "reading" and "writing" the environment (i.e., learning, on the one hand, how to interpret the physical, social, and cultural forces that shape environments, and on the other hand, various ways of playing an active role in shaping environments).
English/Geography 597.03 will involve reading and student-led discussion, weekly "lab" sessions (e.g., film screenings, guest speakers, field trips), and a group-authored Green Paper.
We will highlight change over time, including past relations of culture and environment, present issues, and possible futures—in other words, we will strive to place the present moment in historical perspective. We'll also focus on variation and linkages across space, tying local issues into
progressively larger contexts. The course will be explicitly iinterdisciplinary, examining concepts from the natural science (e.g., natural history; cycles of matter and energy; land forms and climate dynamics), social sciences (e.g., patterns of human impacts on nature, social relations that shaped human impacts, and possible future directions), and the arts and humanities (e.g., cultural conceptions of nature, relationship between conceptions and actions, the role of representation in shaping environments and our relationships to them). The course will also explicitly acknowledge the expertise and experience of environmental actors beyond academia such as environmental organizations.
Students will write a “Credo” (define environmental citizenship in your own terms, reflect on experiences that have shaped your attitudes toward environmental citizenship and your knowledge of environmental issues, and evaluate how you enact your own conception of environmental citizenship) and a “green paper” (put forward propositions for discussion and debate, outline options available for addressing an environmental issue of their choosing, the background information needed to evaluate those options, and the values relevant to choosing among those options).
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4 comments:
Speak for yourself, brains of mush children. My kindergarden grandson tonight read me about 8 of his little books. One sentence was 'This firefighter is an important member of our community'. Pretty darn good, so I'm wondering what children in your life are creating these images for you.
Hmm. Not sure what your point is, but you didn't read the post if you think the "young students" are 5 years old (although it begins there). (Hopefully your grandson is more diligent in his reading skills.) The students in these classes are either upper level undergrads or graduate students being taught that their first citizenship is to some global entity--not God's kingdom, and definitely not the country that is paying for their education. Googling this "environmental citizenship" jargon is to be exposed to a whole new level of hocus pocus goddess worship of pre-history.
Both my children knew how to read before they went to public school, btw. It's not that unusual. But by college age, students should be exposed to more than just the progressive/liberal viewpoint and not just Michael Moore movies in English class. I've looked at some of the elementary curricula and they are definitely prerequisites for this English class--U.S. = bad; all other cultures, esp. pantheistic and nomadic = good; technology and capitalism = evil; marxist ideals = good.
I'll have to admit that I find these students a little old for that kind of brainwashing, but I have seen and heard things very similar several times.
In 2008 I met a college upperclassman who told me he's seen Michael Moore movies in English and science classes. Some he'd seen several times. One prof told him she'd flunk him because his paper topic disagreed with her political views, so of course he chose a different topic. Since critical thinking isn't taught in lower grades, the liberal/progressive faculty can just mow these kids down, and the gov't grant money is their carrot.
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