News

7/23/07

Nature's course

President of America's environmental college says interest in environmental studies at an all-time high

Nancy King

The Cape Breton Post

WHYCOCOMAGH -- The president of a school that bills itself as America's environmental college says he's never seen the level of interest in environmental studies as high as it is currently.

Mitchell Thomashow, president of Unity College, a small college without 560 students in Maine, was Monday's keynote speaker at the second annual eco-conference underway at the Whycocomagh Eco-Centre.  it has drawn together educators from across Nova Scotia and Canada.

Mitchell Thomashow, president of Unity College,

a small environmental college in Maine, gives the

Centre's second annual keynote address at the

Whycocomagh Eco Centre's second annual conference

Monday.  The conference continues today.  Nancy King --

Cape Breton Post

Thomashow noted when he attended New York University, one of the largest universities in the U.S., during the 1960's, it didn't offer a single ecology or environmental studies course.  There's been incredible movement in the area over the past several decades, he added.

At the same time, however, people are increasingly disconnected from their natural surroundings, spending less and less time outside.  For environmental educators, the first step should be getting students outdoors, which Thomashow described as an inexhaustible curricular resource for any teacher.

"If you don't get outside, you don't observe anything," he said.

Thomashow said environmental education comes down to four questions -- what do I know about the place I live, where do things come from, how do I connect to the earth and what is my purpose as a human being.

For most of history, people couldn't survive without knowledge about basic matters such as food sources, but that's been lost as there's no need to know where things come from when you can simply go to the store to buy them, he noted.

"You can connect to the earth when you're driving in your car, believe it or not, watching a spider weave a web in your bedroom, watching mould growing on your food," he said.

The conference was opened by Mi'kmaq elder Albert Marshall, who serves as an elder adviser to the Unama'ki Institute of Natural Resources.  He noted it's important to not be overwhelmed by science and technology and instead balance that with traditional knowledge.

Betsy Jardine, a teacher at Whycocomagh Education Centre who sits on the eco-centre's board, noted environmental educators are not a radical element of society.

"Each one of us is connected to the environment ... it's got to be everybody," she said.

The conference continues today.