Ideas and Essays
The links below take you to essays that represent some of my thoughts about environmental learning, and how an environmental studies education contributes to citizenship and character development. I'm particularly interested in how to broaden the constituencies of environmental learning so that ecological awareness permeates all aspects of one's education and career.
Future of Environmental Graduate Studies
The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus
| "Our goal should be nothing less than to train a new generation of sustainability leadership, graduates who understand the intricate connections between economics and ecology, place and planet, how we live and the consequences of our actions." - Mitchell Thomashow |
Face Down Hockey
This essay is about how childhood sports serves as an approach to ecological awareness.
| "There is a deeper level of engagement. I play ball to know my place in the landscape, to ground myself in the topographical logistics of my mind and body, to engage with weather, landforms, and watercourses, to enter a state of biospheric awareness and participation that I can’t surpass in any other way." -Mitchell Thomashow |
Wonder, Reciprocity and Response: How Heschel's Depth Theology Provides Guidance for Environmental Challenges
This essay is about why and how Heschel's work is vital for contemporary environmental thought.
| "This as an opportunity to reflect on Heschel, reapply his work to environmental thought, and to think about the various ways Heschel’s work can inspire an environmental ethic for a sustainable future. I chose to organize this essay around Heschel’s evocative aphorisms and passages, using them as a meditative tool, as an interpretive guide, as an experiential orientation." -Mitchell Thomashow |
The Gaian Generation: A New Approach to Environmental Learning
This essay is a speculative attempt to answer the question, "How would schooling change if it were completely overhauled so as to educate students to observe, assess, and interpret environmental change?"
"We live at a time when extraordinary learning resources are available for schools everywhere. We are on the threshold of a deeper planetary awareness, an emerging understanding of biospheric dynamics, a comprehensive “science of integration.” But none of this will occur without challenging the status quo of science education." - Mitchell Thomashow
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