Imagining cultures built on alternative root metaphors teaches students that current ones are chosen.

Evidence

Introduce students to several primary discourses of modernity: anthropo - centrism, individualism, progress, mechanism, for example. After defining these concepts carefully, spend time thinking about what a culture with any one of these concepts as a central organizing discourse would be like. Generate a list of examples, and ask students to think about how they are interconnected. Then ask students to think of alternatives and write an essay about a culture of their creation that operates from alternative discourses/metaphors. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 649

Categorization

• SEED: Directly teachable lesson template: have students invent counterfactual cultures organized around different root metaphors—an exercise the reader can drop straight into a course syllabus.
• XREF: connects to: Teaching explicit analytic concepts dissolves the illusion that current social norms are natural. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 839; Educational reform programs inherit Enlightenment root metaphors that frame nature as adversary — C. A. Bowers, Educating for Eco-Justice and Community, 6585; Teachers’ metaphor choice can include or exclude students from discussion. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 507 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Classroom interactions act like root metaphors, transmitting power-laden assumptions students internalize. #expands (0.80) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 761
• Imagining alternative futures can help bring them into being #expands (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 365
• Metaphors materially shape intellectual and political practice. #corroborates (0.75)
• Vicarious cross-cultural learning may substitute for lived foreign experience to aid creativity. #expands (0.72) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2245