Environmental education can alienate resource-dependent rural communities when it condemns local livelihoods.

Evidence

In the beginning, the CO-SEED materials talked about educating for “ecological literacy,’ which for many in the North Country translated into tree hugging. They assumed we wanted to teach children that cutting down trees was bad and that by extension, people that cut down trees (their parents) were also bad. (I can sympathize. It’s like when my kids come home after the substance abuse program in school and tell me I shouldn’t drink a beer with dinner.) In southern and central New Hampshire, “ecological literacy” played well, but not up north. In Gorham, the solution was to focus on forestry education. We worked with the town forester, placed an intern in the school who owned his own independent logging operation, and implemented a high school science curriculum that focused on the town forest. — David Sobel, Place-Based Education, 68

Categorization

• SEED: Grounds an essay thread on how environmental pedagogy must honor local livelihoods; parallels the timber/logging histories of the upper midwest sites in the reader’s own course.
• XREF: Directly serves the polyad’s environmental justice and land/place threads: what ‘saving’ land means when locals’ livelihoods depend on it. — connects to: The label attached to environmental education determines whether communities accept it.; Genuine civic participation can transform how a community perceives its young people; The label ‘environmental education’ itself repels some communities where neutral terms succeed. — David Sobel, Place-Based Education: Connecting…, 72 (+11 more)

Related

• The label attached to environmental education determines whether communities accept it. (similarity 0.81)
• The label ‘environmental education’ itself repels some communities where neutral terms succeed. (similarity 0.81)
• Balancing economic and environmental concerns secures credibility for place-based education. (similarity 0.81)
• Deep ecology is misanthropic and hostile to the environmentalism of the poor. (similarity 0.80)
• Place-based education requires place-specific balancing of economic and environmental concerns (similarity 0.79)
• Environmental content must be balanced with other subjects to be palatable in place-based education. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Deep ecology is misanthropic and hostile to the environmentalism of the poor. #expands (0.85) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 903
• Place-based education requires place-specific balancing of economic and environmental concerns #responds-to (0.85)
• Environmental degradation of a place is experienced as an attack on community identity #complicates (0.82) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 232
• Sustainable communities must weigh every change against community and local nature #qualifies (0.82) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 399
• Indigenous communities frame environmental harms as threats to cultural survival, not ecology #exemplifies (0.82) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 233
• Environmental education works only as a balanced ingredient, not the whole dish. #corroborates (0.80) — David Sobel, Place-Based Education, 73
• Wilderness recreation is a class privilege that devalues rural land-based labor #expands (0.78) — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 65
• Misrecognition and political exclusion structurally block poor communities’ participation in environmental decisions #expands (0.74) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 248
• Class and unequal political power also drive where environmental harms land #expands (0.72) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 209
• Environmental education should transmit an ethic by showing possibilities, not by preaching obligations #expands (0.70) — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 60