Chapter 24. Teaching for Turbulence.

[Ted]

Chapter 24. Teaching for Turbulence.

For comments about chapter 24.

[Ted]

By Michael Maniates (professor of environmental science and political science at Allegheny College; visiting professor at Oberlin)

Tom Prugh says, in the introduction of the third part of the book, that the chapter builds on the theme of grounding peoples’ ethics and behavior on “ecological reality”, by calling for environmental education “to stop misleading and underpreparing students for the challenges ahead.”.

Now, although it is true that the chapter is really addressed to academe, specifically about the way in which “environmental studies and science” (ESS) is taught today in U.S. institutions of higher learning, I found a fair amount of both interesting and relevant material in it for a more general reader like myself.

The author closes his intro thus:

Aspiring students and course architects must remember that the college student of today will graduate into a world that will be singularly defined by turbulence – a white-water turbulence of climate instability, ecologic decline, and attendant economic and political dislocation, with winners, losers, and persistent inequality … Now is the time … to entertain new curricular features that foster nimbleness and wisdom in times of crisis.

Patterns of Teaching and Learning

This section really is addressed to the academic field of ESS, and although interesting, its critiques of the current 1200+ ESS programs at U.S. colleges and universities (as of 2012) can be skipped here. One problem I had with the section is that the author states that “three patterns of teaching and learning emerge from today’s mélange of programs.” I can identify only two in the rest of the discussion. What the third one is simply escapes me.

At any rate, both “patterns” that I see identified as such are criticized for reasons that seem persuasive.

At the end of the section Maniates cites (from The Bridge at the Edge of the World ) Gus Speth’s “clarion call to the environmental community to abandon its safe but largely ineffective reliance on facts, studies, and data to drive political change and social transformation.” (But I’m not sure whether this “clarion call” is to be viewed as part of the solution, or indicative of part of the problem?)


Disabling Assumptions

The author constructs a narrative that links the problems stemming from the “patterns” of the previous section, to “disabling assumptions” that ESS students can fall into.

The chief one he cites is a “naïve faith in crisis” which was revealed by a study by Sam Rigotti in
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Part of Maniates’ problem with this is the same issue that Annie Leonard raised in the previous chapter. In this context, the theory goes that once a huge crisis is upon us, large numbers of people will start committing themselves to small acts of sustainability, thus beginning the process of confronting our environmental dilemma.

The risk here is not that students see crisis on the horizon, for crisis is surely coming. The danger instead is that ESS graduates increasingly view crisis as a benevolent force that will rally the public and enhance the power of environmental problem solvers like themselves. This idea of crisis as a welcome lubricant in the transition to a sustainable word is a lovely, if unpromising, notion. Preparing students for turbulence involves making them aware of less-benign species of crisis and enabling them to react in kind.

The Real Face of Crisis

Maniates recommends highly a book by Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell, saying that it “should be required reading for ESS students” because it

complicates the dim view of human nature to which many ESS students subscribe and offers hope of a better world ... (and) read closely … suggests that ESS students might best think of themselves as midwives working to deliver something already present within society rather than as experts trained to educate the uninformed and motivate the uninspired.

The shortcoming of the book for ESS students is however in the nature of the crises examined, which were all “sudden, cataclysmic events”. Although there will be these types of crises (primarily extreme weather events such as Sandy and Haiyan), the crises that Maniates is concerned with are rather

slow-motion affairs: gradual and persistent, with moments of upheaval punctuating slow decline. Water will grow scarcer, food prices will rise, coastal cities will periodically flood … droughts will become more commonplace, livelihoods will be disrupted, economies may falter, and inequality will deepen.

This is assuredly what will happen, and the reason the author is more concerned about these slow-motion crises is that human reaction to them is very different from the resilience that we can show in the face of the catastrophic. He mentions three “dynamics” that can be evoked by the slow motion crisis, “that ESS graduates are poorly prepared for”:

1. Insecure affluence. The notion that a large slice of people in the developed world (and even many in the under-developed) will develop, that their economic position in live is at risk. As this notion deepens, these people may be especially reluctant to accept even the smallest of material sacrifices, “especially if those sacrifices are imposed on them by elites”.

2. A politics of anger. Another likely result of economic and ecologic upheaval can lead to “an increasing bitterness and virulence of the nation’s politics”. (Worse than we already have?!? Actually, this syndrome may be what is at work already.) Robert Reich, the former U.S. secretary of labor, has commented on this, and notes that it can morph into “un underlying readiness among average voters to see conspiracies among powerful elites”. Thus, rather than slow motion crises bringing people together, it is probably more likely that they will “generate widespread anger, fear, conflict, and a deepening paranoia.”

3. A politics of control. Maniates doesn’t use this phrase, but he makes clear that the flip side of the politics of anger is the final dynamic that can occur, where others feel a desire for “greater government power and control”: thus, a slow slide to authoritarianism.


A Curriculum for Turbulence

This section presents five characteristics that ESS programs should exhibit, in order to prepare students for the real future. I’m not going to even list the, since they all require some explanation, and are really addressed, again, to the academic world. The same goes for Box 24-1, “Gaps and Opportunities in Environmental Studies.”


A New Coherence

The final section cites the book The Failure of Environmental Education. Building on those insights, the author argues for a “new coherence” in ESS programs. The best programs already produce students that

come to understand, with great clarity, that industrial civilization as we know it stands at a precipice of change, where existing political, economic, cultural, and technological patterns must quickly be supplanted by new arrangements and habits. But they are rarely presented with a coherent picture of how to bring about these arrangements or of how exploring competing processes of social, scientific, and technological change can illuminate pressure points for change.

[Ted]

This chapter is one of the longest in the book, and is not easy to summarize, not least because of the author’s overly wordy, very complicated narrative that he builds. It really is addressed to ESS department heads and curriculum managers, who Maniates apparently feels a great need to convince of his view of the historical development of ESS, the way that this development has brought about common features of ESS curricula, and the effects that these curricula have on ESS students.

For me, the main interest of the chapter is the section on The Real Face of Crisis. I think this section has good information and ideas for many readers.

It’s too bad that there is no ESS student reading along here who could offer comments on what they think about the narrative constructed, about Maniates' rather vague recommendations for “reform”, and about the above section.