When I was in sixth grade, the summer camp I attended annually stopped letting us climb the rocks.  I had always loved clambering up the boulders, feeling carefully for stable hand and foot holds; slower than many of my peers, who scrambled up without worry of falling, but always victorious when I finally stood twenty feet above the ground and gazed out over the nearby world.  But for reasons I don’t remember—perhaps a camper hurt themself, perhaps there was just concern that a camper would—one summer the counselors told us that we couldn’t climb the boulders anymore, at least not without strict adult supervision.  We still climbed occasionally after that, always with several adults stationed nearby, but it never felt the same to me.  Perhaps we were safer then, but we were also less free.

“I Spy an Ecosystem!” and Words as Barriers

Today, it seems that our current method for teaching about the environment fosters a perceived intrinsic disconnect, or distance, that humans have from our environment. The words that are used, and the ways in which we use them, make for an unstable foundation for the ongoing efforts to better understand our place in the ‘environment’. As teachers, learners, and as human thinkers, we are constantly trying to bridge connections and understanding between one another and to the world around us. Knowing is about making connections. How can we make connections to Nature and the ‘environment’ when these terms segregate all things ‘human’ from what is ‘natural’? Where do we fit into this environment? Perhaps the terminology we use to talk about ecological concerns is rooted in a way of thinking that we are trying to separate ourselves from. As Bowers says, “Many of those analogs were chosen by men who were unaware of environmental limits, and who took for granted many of the cultural assumptions of their era. Recognizing that words have a history has important implications that are seldom considered” (Bowers 48). How can we teach a love, a respect, and a sense of connection to ourselves while using the same vocabulary that was created by those who were unaware and apathetic to these same concerns? We are having a different conversation now, so maybe we need to be deliberate in our language and conscious of our meaning. 

Somebody came up and said, "You talk about your home as if it were part of your own body." And they were right, this landscape is a living, breathing part of me. I consider it something to protect, like I would my own body. That's an idea that's been passed down from generation to generation. - Judy Bonds (found here)

    Much of our ecology and ‘Ecoliteracy’ 360 began with conversations and questions about home, community, and belonging, and that makes sense, doesn’t it? I certainly thought so, until I came across Timothy Morton and his Ecological Thought, at which point I didn’t know what to think; his argument simultaneously illuminated complexities and made them more confusing. Morton argues that "Fixation on place impedes a truly ecological view" (Morton 26), a claim that I find problematic based on personal experience people I know. Morton says that in order to improve the various crises faced by our world and the human species, it is necessary for us humans to stop thinking of ourselves as apart from Nature-with-a-capital-N. What we need, he says, is ‘the ecological thought’, which he defines in many ways: "a virus that infects all other areas of thinking…It has to do with love, loss, despair…compassion…depression and psychosis…capitalism and what might exist after capitalism…race, class, and gender…society…coexistence.” (Morton 2) He goes on to even broader and more abstract descriptions of the ecological thought:

Tearing Down the Language Barrier

Every environment, whether it is in the city, your home, or the outdoors, has obstacles to tear down and work through. We are not a perfect community and in a way it is great that we will never be a utopia. Individuals gain knowledge through experience, through failing and learning how to overcome and adapt to face our biggest problems. Individuals would never progress intellectually, mentally, or emotionally if our environments were problem safe, poke free bubbles.

Every environment is unique and created differently due to geographic and economic standards. Philadelphia’s solution for better environmental education caliber might not apply to Houston’s solution due to a lot of reasons, but most importantly because of how different each population in each of the environments is. Houston and Philadelphia are two different cities in two different states miles apart from each other, not only does location play a big factor in the issue but so does the general make up of both environments. We would need to take into consideration the types of communities that build both cities, which requires stepping in, and becoming personally aware with who lives there rather than focus solemnly on the problem at hand.

After looking through all of the readings we have done so far in class I decided I wanted to focus on the readings that coverered bilingualism in public schools as well as focusing on disabilities in the public school system. The main focus for this essay is on accessibility: Accessibility for people with learning diabilities or language differences in the public school system as well as accessibility for people in nature whether it’s in natural parks or in playgrounds with man-made structures. For this essay I looked at Lapayese’s essay on bilingualism in public schools, two essays on disabilities, as well as Price’s essay which focused on the idea of access. I also wanted to tie in my own experiences with disabilities and school systems.

A handful of postings ago, I wrote a short one called “Everybody’s Them & Porous Perspectives” and it was about viewing our self and everyone else’s self as a center point; we are all center points. So, if everyone is their own center point, somehow our centrality or individuality cancels out with everyone else’s exact same position, so we are a bunch of me’s. A bunch of points. Points on a grid, evenly spaced out, spaced into infinity. I wonder if it matters that there is a finite amount of me’s currently on our planet. But then to consider and calculate our vastness over time, our growth, our expansion, and our already finished presences — I think if we cannot count and determine an exact number, than it is incalculable, hence, infinite. Effective infinity. There is a certain peace, a certain relief in infinity. A lessening of burden. If we know we cannot comprehend infinity, we can accept that, and then not try and deal with the whole. We can deal with our immediate range of vision, the section of the grid points we can see, and the spaces we can see.

             Environmental education is an effort to teach how natural environments function and the ways people can change their habits and behavior in order to live more sustainably. This form of education aims to foster more ecological intelligence, environmental consciousness, and more caring of the earth. One issue with environmental education, though, is that it often calls for “providing more positive opportunities for contact with nature among children and adults as an integral part of everyday life” (159). By limiting the scope to connecting students to “nature” or to wildscapes free from pollution, skyscrapers, and waste, students from cities who lack access to these outdoor spaces are inhibited from getting the “environmental education” experience. There is a bias in environmental education toward natural, pristine spaces, when in actuality students should be learning about their own communities; the environments they live in, breathe in, and attend school in. This issue of access to untouched outdoor spaces is especially the case in Washington D.C. where certain neighborhoods have disproportionately high rates of pollution compared with other parts of the city. Students who do not have access to “nature” as well as those who live in communities that deal with environmental racism, should learn more about their natural surroundings as well as means of action they can take to address environmental racism.