Educational System Is Failing? In His Manifesto, Thesis

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educational system is failing?

In his manifesto, Earth in Mind, environmental activist and educator David W. Orr states that his pro-environmentalist policies and his philosophy of education are united. Going against the current tendency, even amongst liberal educators, to embrace standardized testing as a measurement of scholastic success, Orr instead emphasizes the need to create more mindful consumers of the earth's resources. Our failure to produce environmentally savvy students is why our education system is failing the planet. In the field of biology "because of the recent overemphasis on molecular biology and genetic engineering, which are more lucrative but not more important," the study of ecology and environmental biology is being lost, and systems of "vernacular" and indigenous knowledge or 'folk culture' are being completely rejected as worthy of scientific value, and are instead relegated to anthropological curiosities (Orr 9-10).

The problem is not that the United States is failing to 'keep up' educationally with other nations in terms of how student performance is measured. Rather, the problem is how success is conceptualized by educators and politicians alike. We must ask ourselves, writes Orr, in the face of an increasingly threatened planet, why learning new ways to make it serve our needs, and our needs alone, is so important. Above all, we must educate children how to become better consumers of the environment rather than better destroyers of the earth. Unless we do so, our future health as a species is at risk. We must readjust our definition of what it means to be educationally and vocationally successful.

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Of global warming, Orr says: "this is not the work of ignorant people. Rather it is largely the results of work by people with BA's, BSs, LLBs, MBAs, and PhDs" (Orr 7).

For Orr, viewing education merely as the accumulation of knowledge is fundamentally misguided. This viewpoint is a self-interested way of looking at learning, both for the individual and for the nation. Seeing the advancement of one's own knowledge or welfare as the sole purpose of learning has resulted in the destruction of the planet. Education should lead us to a more mindful relationship with the earth. People must be educated how to live in consort with the planet, not encouraged to strive to change it and tax its already fragile resources to produce more for human consumption.

Orr is open in his advocacy of introducing a strongly moral element to education. True intelligence means learning how to protect the planet and to gain a sense of foresight that transcends the limits of the self. Schools should not be ranked based upon the ability to find graduates high-paying jobs and get them into good graduate schools, since this often perpetuates the cycle of using human intelligence to destroy the earth. Instead, the reputation of the school should rest upon the quality of its ability to produce moral, thoughtful human beings who try to protect the earth for future generations.

Orr's philosophy of education is highly idealistic. An immediately problematic notion with this philosophy is that, in public educational systems….....

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