Environmental Education Ferkany 1 Forthcoming in ...

Environmental Education

Ferkany

Forthcoming in Routledge Companion to Environmental Ethics, Benjamin Hale and Andrew Light, eds. “Environmental Education” Matt Ferkany Introduction Environmental education is a term of art ordinarily intended to refer to any education that is in, about, or for the environment in some way (Lucas 1980). Outdoor or place-‐based education programs are examples of environmental education in the first intended sense, ecology or environmental studies examples of the second, and environmental advocacy or public campaigning of the third. The distinction between these is soft. Any instance of environmental education can be in, about, or for the environment all at once and any education intended to be merely in or about the environment can have incidental pro-‐environment advocacy effects (i.e. an agriculture student can become more pro-‐environment just by taking a field ecology course). Because environmental education in any of the intended senses can take place informally or as part of formal schooling, environmental education does not refer exclusively to institutionalized primary, secondary, or post-‐secondary schooling. A large proportion of environmental education in the United States takes place at nature centers, parks and the like. Messages about the environment that individuals (especially developing youth) receive in the public space—in the media, from friends and family, or from government or businesses—can also educate them. Most ethical controversy about environmental education concerns education for the environment in formal settings, public schools especially. Two big issues are perennial favorites:

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The aims problem: What ideally is the purpose of environmental education? What should environmental educators aim to teach? Should they aim to impart knowledge and understanding in natural or environmental sciences, to strengthen students’ pro-‐

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environment values, attitudes or behaviors, or to foster environmental decision-‐making capacity? •

The legitimacy problem: How, if at all, can environmental education be legitimate insofar as it does or is intended to strengthen students’ pro-‐environment values, attitudes, behaviors or relationships (pro-‐EVABRs)? Do environmental educators have the right to influence students in this way or are they obligated to avoid pro-‐environment advocacy in their teaching?

One under-‐researched issue concerns whether thinking philosophically about the ethics of environmental education can yield novel insights for environmental philosophy and ethics more generally. This entry focuses on the aims and legitimacy problems and closes with some thoughts on this and on the practice of environmental education. The Aims Problem As any education that is in, about, or for the environment in some way, environmental education can have many different purposes. Traditional classroom or lab-‐based education in the natural sciences, as well as science education in the field (or other form of outdoor education) are forms of environmental education. Nominally, they aim to impart scientific knowledge and understanding. “Facts and information” campaigns (e.g. as carried out by special interest groups, like a hunting and fishing club circulating information about the ecological benefits of a strong base of hunters) often share this aim while taking a completely different form and seeking to influence students’ EVABRs. As a component of formal schooling however, “environmental education” traditionally refers to education that is all of in, about and for the environment involving some combination of the following: teaching some basic concepts of ecology or ecocentric ethics emphasizing notions of ecological stability and the interconnectedness and intrinsic value of all life, e.g. Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic (1949); imparting facts,

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knowledge and information about the impact of human activities on ecosystems, such as species extinction rates; and local or outdoor experiences intended to inculcate attachment to particular places or broad appreciation and love of nature (Carson 1965; Hungerford & Volk 1990; Leopold 1949: 214; Van Matre 1990). Environmental education in this traditional sense is widely regarded as an activist view of its purposes and methods (Jickling & Spork 1998; Johnson & Mappin 2005). It aims to strengthen the student’s pro-‐EVABRs and is sometimes criticized as constituting more a kind of moral training than education (Jickling & Spork 1998). I return to this criticism below, but it is worth first noting that the activist ideal is a broad category that can take many different forms depending upon the ethics, epistemic focus, and experiential activities deployed. In addition to the traditional ecocentrist approach just outlined, for example, canonical versions of education for sustainable development (ESD), such as the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, broaden the ethical focus to include influencing student EVABRs relevant to the goals of sustainable development, or (by one common definition) meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (UNESCO n.d.). The epistemic focus is broadened to include things like critical thinking and systems thinking. Forms of service learning (like volunteering with a state PIRG) or building and maintaining an aquaponic food production system might be common experiential features of ESD curricula. Other more recent ideals like ecojustice education merge the traditional ecocentrist aims and curriculum to a concern for environmental, food or gender justice via an ecofeminist social analysis, i.e. the idea that systems of hierarchy are the common cause of social injustice and environmental destruction (Martusewicz et al. 2011). The ecojustice educator’s epistemic focus shifts to include critical social theory and skepticism of

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science or science-‐driven or technocratic environmental decision-‐making. The site of her experiential curriculum broadens to include places like urban farmer’s markets and school gardens. Whatever particular form they may take, activist ideals have received a lot of criticism. As previously mentioned, one important objection claims that they are forms of moral training more so than teaching or education, which involves imparting knowledge, skills and understanding. This criticism comes in two varieties. One is simply that, to the extent that they are indoctrinating, activist approaches fail to respect the autonomy of students to make up their own minds and thus lack legitimacy (Bell 2004; Jickling 2003; Mappin & Johnson 2005; Schinkel 2009). Teaching that is intentionally designed to prevent students from considering the weaknesses of a teacher’s favored view or from considering alternatives to it can be indoctrinating in this way. A related but different worry focuses on the consequences of advocacy for students’ ability to form well-‐reasoned views of their own. By advocating for a particular ethical perspective, advocacy approaches may threaten to short-‐circuit critical questioning of the favored ethical perspectives being advanced, or worse, undermine acquisition of the critical capacities students need in order to become independent critical thinkers in the world outside of the classroom. Students will eventually become citizens who will have to decide for themselves what to believe about potentially very different problems from those they encountered in school. From anti-‐environment special interests, they will encounter persuasive-‐looking arguments deploying rhetorical strategies like proof surrogate, scare tactics, red herring and the like. If they are unprepared to detect the error in these, what reason is there to expect that they will form and firmly adhere to reasoned environmental perspectives in the face of the “strongly represented but weakly supported” anti-‐environment perspectives, such as those espoused by organized climate change denial (Palmer 2006: 10)? If little, activist environmental educators are committed to methods that are ineffective means to achieving their own purposes.

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Another related problem is that available empirical evidence suggests that “facts and information” approaches to influencing people’s EVABRs are ineffective anyway (Heberlein 2012). The attitudes people have about the environment have a complex structure making them sometimes weak and easy to change, not always for the better, and at other times recalcitrant and almost impossible to change. Robust anti-‐environment attitudes, on the other hand, are often easily whipped up when particular pro-‐environment policies can be linked to things people deeply oppose. For example, very few people have sufficient connection to obscure wild species—like the humpback chub (a species of freshwater fish native to the Colorado river system and endangered by habitat loss from dam construction)—to form particularly robust pro-‐attitudes toward them, but many people strongly believe that economic growth is good and “big government” is bad. Opponents of efforts to preserve the humpback chub can thus easily solicit anti-‐preservation sentiment by linking preservation to economic stagnation and big-‐government, even while admitting that preservation is the morally best policy. But even supposing that traditional environmental educators can succeed in fostering robust pro-‐ environment attitudes, other research indicates that the link between pro-‐environment attitudes and behaviors (or pro-‐anything attitudes and behaviors) is weak or highly susceptible to the influence of numerous factors (e.g. the availability of local supports like bike lanes, recycling centers) beyond the educator’s control (Kollmuss & Agyeman 2002). A last criticism applies to traditional ecocentrist environmental education specifically. By some analyses, environmental issues, such as climate change, are crucially collective action problems that cannot be (easily) solved simply through individual behavior change. In making a priority of influencing individual students’ environmental attitudes and behaviors, traditional approaches threaten to miss this point (Jickling & Wals 2013).

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From here it is natural to move toward either a science literacy or environmental civics ideal of environmental education’s purposes and methods. Science literacy is the view that scientific knowledge and understanding (of ecology, environmental science or the human-‐environment relationship) should be the environmental educator’s primary focus (Jickling & Spork 1998; Mappin & Johnson 2005; NRC 2012). Environmental civics is the view that environmental educators should focus on building citizens’ capacity to participate in the environmental decision-‐making of a democratic society (Curren 2010; Krasny & Bonney 2005). These views have different advantages, but seem to share the advantage that they are not so obviously vulnerable to the legitimacy problem. Science literacy and environmental civics approaches make a priority of imparting scientific understanding or civic decision-‐making capacity, and so appear not to threaten the student’s right or capacity to make up her own mind about environmental ethics. Advocates of science literacy generally assume that the natural sciences are a trustworthy source of crucial environmental knowledge and understanding. They quite rightly point out that ecologists no longer regard ecosystems as essentially unified, stable, organism-‐like systems and that the notions of ecological stability, succession, or health and the like—often at the center of activist approaches—are now more at home in traditional knowledge systems or various moral or spiritual outlooks (Kolasa & Pickett 2005). In the American context, there is also evidence that citizens across widely different cultural groups already care a great deal about the environment, but also are relatively ignorant of important basic insights in environmental sciences (Kempton et al. 1996). They are consequently prone to draw erroneous conclusions about what sorts of policies will realize their environmental values. For example, many people confuse the science of climate change and atmospheric ozone and mistakenly believe that ozone depletion is a significant cause of global warming (Leiserowitz & Smith 2010: 3). If so, correcting citizens’ scientific misunderstandings would seem to be the most pressing educational priority.

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Advocates of environmental civics, on the other hand, argue that scientific knowledge and understanding are not sufficient for wise, just or fair environmental decision-‐making. These kinds of decisions also require the moral and civic forms of knowledge and understanding imparted by the social sciences and humanities. One problem is that even highly science literate citizens will have limited capacity to assess scientific information for themselves and will have to make decisions based on scientific testimony (Anderson 2011). A crucial but potentially achievable skill for them is the ability to correctly discern which sources of scientific information are credible and which are not. But setting even that aside, environmental decisions are ultimately practical, or decisions about what we should do, which cannot be made without taking a position on questions of values, or what’s right, good, worthwhile, just and the like (Des Jardins 2005). Scientific information is certainly important to doing this well; if we do not know the likely consequences of the various courses of action open to us, we cannot make an informed decision about which ones are ethically preferable. It is helpful to know, for example, that option A involves an X% risk of exposure to some toxin, Y, whereas option B involves a Z%. But once this information is in we still must decide which level of risk would be tolerable, best, right, good, fair, tolerable, just and the like. Does one of these options create undue risk for one community compared to another, or more needed wealth than the other, or involve any unacceptable costs to nonhuman species? The scientific information is ultimately factual information, or information about what is the case, and does not tell us how we should weigh these other considerations in our decision about what should be the case, i.e. what we ought to do. The judgments of scientists on these dimensions of environmental matters are not privileged above the judgments of ordinary well-‐informed, rational citizens. For these sorts of reasons environmental problems are widely believed to fall into a class of practical problems particularly ill-‐suited for technocratic resolution and thus require decision-‐ makers having civic decision-‐making capacities.

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The various ideals of environmental education’s aims are not mutually exclusive and many (perhaps most) scholars agree that all of these aims are important. What they disagree about is the relative priority of the different goals. This disagreement is not trivial. Different curricula and pedagogical methods are suited to the different goals. Endorsing the primacy of one aim over another entails endorsing a potentially very contentious view of the structure and place of environmental education. The natural and some social sciences, not the arts and humanities, will be the proper place for environmental education if science literacy is the most important goal, but the arts and humanities will be at least as important if the aim is to instill pro-‐EVBARs. On the other hand, an infusion approach (in which environmental content is spread throughout the curriculum) might be most appropriate if environmental civics is the highest priority. For all its problems, many lines of defense are open to advocates of activism. The complexity of attitudes and the attitude-‐behavior link is certainly one explanation of why traditional environmental education has failed to generate the green revolution its advocates hoped for. But another might be that traditional environmental education has been only weakly deployed. The charge that advocacy is indoctrinating is also dubious if so. Indoctrination generally seems to presuppose a mass effort (whether coordinated or uncoordinated) that imparts ignorance rather than knowledge and understanding of new ways of thinking (Taylor 2012). Against a backdrop in which a majority of environmental education fails to interrogate an environmentally destructive or unjust status quo, activist efforts might be precisely what civic environmental progress requires. The criticism that imparting facts and information is ineffective is also a straw man inasmuch as traditional ecocentrist environmental education in formal settings is deeper and involves imparting skill, knowledge, and understanding, e.g. of ecological science or ethical reasoning. In addition, the Kempton et al evidence that Americans generally place high value on the environment is dated and precedes

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some of the more radical steps the political right has taken against environmental causes in the past 15 or so years (Bailey 1996). By some measures, pro-‐environment attitudes on the whole have declined since 1990 and more recent studies find wide variation in American’s environmental attitudes that track differences in political orientation, gender, education, race and the like (Franzen & Vogl 2013; McCright & Dunlap 2011). One demographic—conservative white males—accounts for a significant proportion of all American climate change deniers (McCright & Dunlap 2011). Worse, McCright and Dunlap also found that the most fervent deniers report the highest levels of self-‐reported understanding of the basic science of climate change, i.e. the more climate change deniers think they know about climate science, the more they fervently they deny the climate change problem. This finding, according to McCright and Dunlap, is probably the result of the worst deniers reporting to know more than they actually do about climate change (2011). But the finding jibes with other evidence that people’s perceptions of climate change risk are shaped as much or more by “cultural cognition,” or the extent to which they perceive that action on climate change threatens their worldview, not their understanding of climate science (Kahan et al. 2011; McCright & Dunlap 2011). Apparently a majority of people most concerned about climate change do understand its basic science, while very few of those who are dismissive or unconcerned about it do (Leiserowitz & Smith 2010). Still, Americans are sharply divided about climate change by political orientation (Pew Research Center 2014) and general science literacy does not predict greater concern and may even negatively correlate with it among those who self-‐identify with more conservative ideological orientations (Kahan et al 2012). It is open to advocacy environmental educators to argue that, while science literacy may be absolutely crucial to making good environmental decisions, without sound environmental values, science literacy is either inaccessible or insufficient for sound environmental decision-‐making. If so, values and attitudes education still matter a great deal.

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The Legitimacy Problem That it aims to strengthen students’ pro-‐EVABRs—that it is education for the environment—is the central reason why some question activism’s legitimacy. Setting aside issues of efficacy (i.e. whether activism produces competent and active environmental citizens), the putative wrong is a wrong of disrespect for student freedom. Students as (prospective) citizens have a fundamental right to make up their own minds about ethical matters. Activist environmental education allegedly violates this right by either tilting the curriculum more strongly toward one (or a limited range) of environmental perspectives over others or taking debate about (certain views of) the value of the environment off the table altogether, as well as using techniques that appeal to our desires and emotions, such as outdoor experiential or place-‐based learning. Because science literacy and environmental civics do not aim to (intentionally) strengthen student’s pro-‐EVABRs—they do not constitute forms of education for the environment—they do not seem to threaten this right, at least not in the same way or degree. Insofar as these approaches impart the kinds of critical knowledge and skills individuals need in order to make up their own minds, they actually support students’ autonomy, or capacity for individual self-‐governance. This however is certainly not to say that they are uncontroversial, educate students for nothing in particular, or involve no moral training. Autonomy, and critical thinking more broadly, are controversial aims of education, preparation for which involves training in certain skills and moral and intellectual virtues, such as honesty, integrity and a kind of humility (Brighouse 1998; Siegel 1988). That there is an element of moral training here has been part of the canon of moral education since Aristotle, for whom the purpose of the study of ethics was not finally so that we could learn about the good, but to be good (1985). According to Aristotle, learning via habituation has to precede learning via teaching and reasoning because appeals to reason cannot move us the way that they move the virtuous unless we

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first come to see things as the virtuous see them. For example, unless I see that and why friendship is a good, I cannot be moved by mere appeals to my reason to treat my friend as another self. Nowadays we also understand that the capacity for moral cognition develops over time along certain broad pathways such that certain kinds of moral reasoning are simply inaccessible to those in earlier stages of development (Gibbs 2010). But Aristotle’s point applies even to fully developed moral agents, who are not necessarily thereby virtuous but only capable of being virtuous. A fully developed moral agent can fail to see things as the virtuous see them and be in need of this training if he is to become fully good. The need for training in science literacy and environmental civics can be brought out by revisiting the putative education/training contrast through one prominent account of educational versus noneducational activities. Among the most famous of these is R.S. Peters’s education as initiation, according to which educational activities initiate the learner into the practices of inquiry in worthwhile fields of study, particularly those important to thinking critically about fundamental ethical questions (Peters 1964). Education using this model is crucially as much or more about imparting the skills, values and attitudes of scholars in knowledge disciplines, such as critical thinking, open-‐mindedness and a love of knowledge, as about imparting the received knowledge of those disciplines. This idea is similar to the central thrust of environmental civics education. But putting it this way reveals the similarity between traditional ecocentrist education and environmental civics, or even science literacy insofar as it aims to enable people to be able to think like scientists (NRC 2012). The latter approaches certainly do not aim simply to inculcate students unthinkingly into some worldview or set of desired behaviors. But neither can they render them scientifically or civically literate without initiating them into the attitudes, values and behaviors of practitioners of those activities. The contrast between education and training is thus a red herring; even scholarly education involves a kind of moral training.

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Notably scholarly aims of education are hardly uncontroversial these days. Some conservatives in the U.S. view academic science, humanistic scholarship, and critical thinking generally as just another religion or ideology opposed to their own faith (Stolzenberg 1993). On the other hand, many liberal educational researchers maintain that the focal purpose of education is advancing social justice, not imparting knowledge and understanding (Schiro 2012). This controversy does not by itself delegitimize teaching these subjects. But it does show that education inevitably has a moral dimension and involves taking a stance on fundamental questions of value. The question educators must answer is not whether to teach values or not, but which values they may legitimately teach and why. Science literacy and environmental civics are putatively legitimate, whereas any form of activism is not, because they support the autonomy of individuals to make up their own minds. This value is the underlying source of the legitimacy problem. One line of defense for advocates of activism then is to reject this value, or liberal political morality generally. Some do so, advancing one or another of a few common arguments against liberalism. One argument targeting liberal neutrality (i.e. the idea that liberal governments should not intentionally favor some ways of life over others on grounds of their superiority) is that environmental education embodies controversial ideals about the best ways of life (e.g. recreation in nature is good for you, or nature is sacred). Since neutrality therefore forbids liberal governments to take a position on such ideals, it forbids them to take a position on environmental education. But environmental education is urgently needed (so the argument goes), so we should abandon liberal democracy for a “green” communitarian one in which citizens share the political goal of living environmentally (Postma 2006). Another argument is that because future generations cannot participate in mutually self-‐interested bargaining in setting the terms for social cooperation, contractarian ideals of justice like those of Hobbes, Locke or John Rawls cannot justify principles of intergenerational justice, or principles requiring us to pass a liveable planet on to future generations (Postma 2002). A third is that liberal democracies are committed to ideals at the root of contemporary

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environmental problems (Martusewicz et al. 2011, chap.2). These include that individuals are “essentially self-‐interested creatures,” that “private property and the accumulation of resources are…a primary right,” and that liberal democracy involves a “hierarchized way of thinking” leading to a “mindset where various aspects of the natural world [are] defined not as an interdependent set of relationships among living things, but rather as so many commodities to be harvested and used in the pursuit of both imperial and individual profit” (2011: p.49). Defenses of activism of these sorts have certain limitations. Insofar as being educated partly consists in a capacity to make up one’s own mind, being educated and being (at least potentially) autonomous are linked. In addition, autonomy in this sense is perhaps one of the more widely valued and least controversial freedoms. While popularity is not by itself legitimating, the burden of proof seems to lie with critics rather than advocates of the liberal legitimacy constraints designed to protect that freedom in education. If so, it is difficult to see how any critique of these constraints can succeed without recognizing the importance of the autonomy aim in some sense. But it is difficult to see what sense this could be other than the liberal one in which individuals have a fundamental interest and right in the freedom to make up their own minds, a right that may not in general be subordinated in the service of collective ends (Rawls 2001: 57). This paradigm sense of liberal freedom is nowhere to be found in Martusewicz and company’s description of liberal democracy and their critique of it is consequently straw man. In addition, no undue hierarchical thinking has any place in paradigmatic Twentieth-‐Century articulations of liberalism, such as Rawls’s liberal egalitarianism. Neither does the idea that individuals are egoistic and incapable of recognizing a common good, nor that property and accumulation of resources is a fundamental right. These ideas may characterize neoliberalism, but that is an altogether different animal from liberal egalitarianism.

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Critiques from neutrality and future generations may also be moot in defense of advocacy (Ferkany & Whyte 2013). Both may be moot partly because liberal approaches to justice need not be neutralist or contractarian. The “perfectionist” and utilitarian liberalism of John Stuart Mill is neither (1978). The neutrality argument is moot because neutrality is compatible with state-‐mandated environmental education. The neutrality principle only forbids liberals to intentionally oppose any permissible way of life from condemnation of that way of life qua way of life, e.g. from condemnation of whaling ways of life because they are whaling ways. If critics are right that environmental education is urgently needed, anti-‐environment ways of life may no longer be permitted (Michael 2000). But even if they are, liberals are free to intentionally oppose them on grounds that they violate the rights of others, such as future generations, or otherwise threaten the survival of liberal institutions; opposition on these grounds can be silent about the value of anti-‐environment ways of life for those who value them, and no disrespect is shown to those who value them. Rejecting liberalism may also be unnecessary because activist environmental education, at least in some forms, may be compatible with support for student autonomy after all. Activist environmental education (as defined here) involves some intention to persuade students to come to see the environment as having value in some sense, to endorse some pro-‐environment outlook or other, and to make better environmental lifestyle choices. Because such learning involves emotional and behavioral as much as cognitive change, strategic activist educators will also use methods that appeal to more than their students’ reason. These aims and techniques certainly steer students away from positions teachers perceive to be anti-‐environment. But they also leave considerable room for variation in precisely how much space is also left for open, critical discussion and questioning (Ferkany & Whyte 2013). If so, there is no obvious reason why educators cannot be both ardent advocates of independent student critical thinking, of autonomy, and of certain controversial positions in environmental ethics. The latter may influence the beliefs students come to adopt, but it is not clear that influenced beliefs cannot be

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autonomously adopted; on a common account, if on due reflection we come to endorse any belief— influenced or not—then we endorse it autonomously (Dworkin 1988; Frankfurt 1988). The threat to our autonomy of any influence on our beliefs may also depend quite a bit on the content of the belief, whether it is false or in some way discourages being autonomous, and also on the spirit in which we are influenced to adopt it, e.g. whether dogmatically or by means of careful rational persuasion. On certain plausible assumptions, it may even be that strategies supporting student autonomy are very closely aligned with those for soliciting pro-‐EVABRs, such as outdoor experiential learning, selective reading lists, or more favorably grading pro-‐environment student work. Suppose, for example, that the student’s broader social world provides relatively little exposure to a diversity of conflicting, but newer ways of thinking in environmental ethics, alongside correspondingly little opportunity to think critically about the environmental status quo. In that context, students will quite naturally learn the environmental status quo’s system of values, and few or no alternatives, unless teachers complement that learning by exposing them to alternative systems and enabling them to understand their underlying rationale. If so, just teaching in ways that enable students to access and understand new ways of thinking may radicalize their EVABRs, while necessarily enhancing their capacity to make up their own minds about environmental matters. In general, because autonomy involves choice from among a range of worthy options upon which one has been able to reflect, it is not obvious that activist environmental educators cannot both respect and support the autonomy of their students and plump in certain ways for what they take to be more pro-‐environment positions. This defense has some limitations, too. One is that it is not available to activist educators with certain radical agendas. Because it requires advocacy of open, critical inquiry, it is incompatible with efforts to inculcate very specific pro-‐environment ideologies rather than a more generalized pro-‐ environment mindset, one open to interpretation and a range of differences of opinion. It is also incompatible with approaches in which students are persuaded primarily by non-‐rational means to

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adopt very specific or false beliefs, e.g. by taking critical debate about them entirely off the table. While it is quite possible to autonomously adopt false beliefs, persuading another to adopt false beliefs by non-‐rational means is paradigmatically manipulative. These features might also entail that traditional ecocentrist environmental education (e.g. Van Matre’s earth education) is illegitimate insofar as the ideas of ecological interdependence and stability usually at the heart of it are quite specific and no longer supported in ecological science (Kolasa & Pickett 2005). For many, this might constitute a reductio ad absurdum of the view. More broadly the defense is also incompatible with neo-‐Nietzschean or constructivist approaches in which the very ideas of truth, knowledge, or justification—the essential components of the practice of rational persuasion—are questioned; outside of the possibility of this practice, it is difficult to make sense of the difference between manipulative and non-‐manipulative teaching methods, or cognitive and non-‐cognitive methods generally. If so, this rational persuasion defense may fail to constitute a defense of activism at all insofar as activism necessarily involves a preference for non-‐cognitive methods of persuasion. If the rational persuasion defense is sound, however, some forms of activist environmental education can go beyond imparting scientific knowledge and understanding or environmental decision-‐ making capacity while remaining of a kind with them. Advocacy approaches consistent with the use of rational persuasion and critical thinking thereby have more in common with science literacy and environmental civics than is ordinarily recognized. To that extent they share the features that have led scholars to regard science literacy and environmental civics as legitimate forms of environmental education. Conclusion

Because it has traditionally aimed to strengthen pro-‐EVABRs, developments in environmental

education have mostly tracked developments in environmental ethics or politics. If environmental ethics

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has historically been the handmaiden of the environmental movement, environmental education has been the handmaiden of environmental ethics. What novel insights for environmental ethics, if any, might come from philosophical study of the ethics of environmental education is an under-‐researched question. Kevin de LaPlante has proposed that broadening the focus of environmental philosophy teaching and research (from a focus on ethics to a focus on “the difference environment makes in understanding some phenomenon”) both helps solve the legitimacy problem and usefully opens new horizons for scholarly inquiry and interdisciplinary work (2006: 52). Matthew Stitcher has suggested a principle for the ethical use of animals from considering appropriate limits to their use in undergraduate environmental education (2012).

Speculatively however, this review suggests that philosophical investigation of the ethics of

environmental education can yield novel insights for two major recent debates in environmental ethics. The first concerns whether the concept of intrinsic value—the idea that some things, potentially including nonhumans, have, or are worth regarding as having, value in themselves—is especially important for environmental ethics. This review suggests that it is and is not. It is insofar as serious engagement with this idea can advance the knowledge, understanding and autonomy of those previously unfamiliar with it, and also contribute to a general civic willingness to interrogate the environmental status quo. It is not (or perhaps is again, in a different way) insofar as citizens of a liberal democracy can reasonably disagree on whether or what in the environment has intrinsic value, such that appeal to intrinsic value is unlikely ever to legitimize the use of coercion in environmental politics.

A second recent debate concerns the merits of thinking about environmental ethics in terms of

the virtues instead of (or in addition to) general principles. Insofar as moral agency and intellectual excellence both grow along Aristotelian lines, involving various sorts of habituation and values training, this review suggests that environmental virtue ethicists are on to something in moving beyond principles

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to think about the qualities of environmentally good persons and citizens. If fully realized environmental agency involves suites of integrated habits of head, heart and action, a deeper understanding of the moral and intellectual character virtues embodying these is essential to becoming ethical environmental agents ourselves, and helping others to become such agents.

These ideas are speculative, however. Much more work needs to be done to establish what

insights for environmental ethics might be derived from philosophical study of the ethics of environmental education.

The discussion of this entry does suggest a few conclusions concerning the practice of

environmental education, however. From respect for student autonomy—the primary limit on how far teacher’s can go in influencing students’ EVABRs—teachers should enable students to critically reflect on the values they are being taught. Teachers should avoid disclosing their own ethical opinions where this will pressure students inappropriately and disclose when students might otherwise fail to note alternative perspectives. They should also teach the fundamental critical thinking and media literacy skills needed to detect fallacious arguments or mass campaigns of environmental misinformation.

However, all education influences students’ values on some level and it is legitimate, within

certain limits, for environmental educators to influence students’ EVABRs. Experiences designed to do this, such as outdoor wilderness experiences or hydroponic food production, all may be legitimate ways of teaching, e.g., the values of ecocentrism or sustainability. Insofar as some students’ values also impair their literacy of basic environmental science or their ability to participate in democratic environmental decision-‐making, experiences giving students access to alternative value perspectives are not only legitimate, but important components of a complete environmental education. In contexts where anti-‐ environment and anti-‐reason forces are increasingly aligned, the distance between activist, science literacy and environmental civics forms of environmental education shrinks.1

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Word count: 5819 Notes 1

The author wishes to thank Ian Werkheiser, Zach Piso, Hannah Miller, Allison Freed, and Matthew Deroo for helpful discussion of an earlier draft of this chapter.

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Des Jardins, J.R., 2005. Scientific ecology and ecological ethics: the challenges of drawing ethical conclusions from scientific facts. In E. Johnson & M. Mappin, eds. Environmental Education and Advocacy: Changing Perspectives Ecology and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 31–49. Jickling, B., 2003. Environmental education and environmental advocacy: revisited. Journal of Environmental Education, 34(2), p.20(8). Jickling, B. & Spork, H., 1998. Education for the Environment: a critique. Environmental Education Research, 4(3), pp.309–327. Jickling, B. & Wals, A.E.J., 2013. Probing Normative Research in Environmental Education: Ideas About Education and Ethics. In R. B. Stevenson et al., eds. International Handbook of Research on Environmental Education. New York: Routledge. John Mill Stuart, 1978. On Liberty, Indianapolis: Hackett. Johnson, E. & Mappin, M. eds., 2005. Environmental Education and Advocacy: Changing Perspectives Ecology and Education, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kahan, D., Jenkins-‐Smith, H. & Braman, D., 2011. Cultural cognition of scientific consensus. Journal of risk research, 14(2), pp.147–174. Kahan, D.M. et al., 2012. The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Nature Climate Change, 2(10), pp.732–735. Kempton, W.M., Boster, J.S. & Hartley, J.A., 1996. Environmental Values in American Culture, MIT Press. Kolasa, J. & Pickett, S.T., 2005. Changing academic perspectives of ecology: a view from within. In E. Johnson & M. Mappin, eds. Environmental Education and Advocacy: Changing Perspectives Ecology and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 50–71. Kollmuss, A. & Agyeman, J., 2002. Mind the Gap: why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-‐environmental behavior? Environmental Education Research, 8(3), pp.239–60. Krasny, M. & Bonney, R., 2005. A framework for integrating ecological literacy, civics literacy and environmental citizenship in environmental education. In E. Johnson & M. Mappin, eds. Environmental Education and Advocacy: Changing Perspectives Ecology and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De LaPlante, K., 2006. Can you teach environmental philosophy without being an environmentalist? In C. Palmer, ed. Teaching Environmental Ethics. Leiden: Brill, pp. 48–62. Leiserowitz, A. & Smith, N., 2010. Knowledge of Climate Change Across Global Warming’s Six Americas, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University: Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Leopold, A., 1949. A Sand County Almanac, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Lucas, A.M., 1980. Science and environmental education: pious hopes, self praise and disciplinary chauvinism. Studies in Science Education, 7, pp.1–26. Mappin, M. & Johnson, E., 2005. Changing perspectives of ecology and education in environmental education. In E. Johnson & M. Mappin, eds. Environmental Education and Advocacy: Changing Perspectives Ecology and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–27. Martusewicz, R.A., Edmundson, J. & Lupinacci, J., 2011. EcoJustice Education, New York: Routledge. Van Matre, S., 1990. Earth education...: a new beginning, Warrenville, IL: The Institute for Earth Education. McCright, A.M. & Dunlap, R.E., 2011. Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States [electronic resource]. Global environmental change, 21(4), pp.1163–1172. Michael, M.A., 2000. Liberalism, Environmentalism, and the Principle of Neutrality. Public Affairs Quarterly, 14(1), pp.39–56. NRC, 2012. A Framework for K-‐12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Palmer, C. ed., 2006. Teaching Environmental Ethics, Leiden: Brill. Peters, R.S., 1964. Education as initiation: an inaugural lecture delivered at the University of London Institute of Education, 9 December, 1963, Evans. Pew Research Center, 2014. Climate Change: Key Data Points from Pew Research. Pew Research Center. Available at: http://www.pewresearch.org/key-‐data-‐points/climate-‐change-‐key-‐data-‐points-‐ from-‐pew-‐research/ [Accessed May 9, 2014]. Postma, D., 2002. Taking the Future Seriously: On the Inadequacies of the Framework of Liberalism for Environmental Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 36(1), pp.41–56. Postma, D., 2006. Why Care for Nature?, Dordrecht: Springer. Rawls, J., 2001. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schinkel, A., 2009. Justifying Compulsory Environmental Education in Liberal Democracies. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 43(4), pp.507–536. Schiro, M.S., 2012. Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns 2nd edition., Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications, Inc. Siegel, H., 1988. Educating Reason, Routledge. Stichter, M., 2012. Justifying Animal Use in Education. Environmental Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Journal Dedicated to the Philosophical Aspects of Environmental Problems, 34(2), pp.199–209.

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Stolzenberg, N., 1993. “He Drew A Circle That Shut Me Out”: Assimilation, Indoctrination, and the Paradox of a Liberal Education. Harvard Law Review, 106(3), pp.581–667. Taylor, R., 2012. Indoctrination: A Renewed Threat to Autonomy in Today’s Educational Environment. In Philosophpy of Education Society of Great Britain. Oxford. Available at: http://www.philosophy-‐ of-‐education.org/uploads/papers2012/Taylor.pdf [Accessed May 8, 2014]. UNESCO, UN Decade for Sustainable Development: The DESD at a glance. Available at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001416/141629e.pdf [Accessed March 14, 2011].

Further reading Dobson, A., 2003. Citizenship and the Environment, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nucci, L. & Narvaez, D. eds., 2008. Handbook of Moral and Character Education, New York: Routledge. Palmer, J., 1998. Environmental Education in the 21st Century: Theory, practice, progress and promise, London: Routledge. Sagoff, M., 1988. Can environmentalists be liberals? In The Economy of the Earth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 146–170. Stevenson, R.B. et al. eds., 2013. International Handbook of Research on Environmental Education, New York: Routledge. Related Topics Ecocentrism, Environmental Citizenship, Liberalism, Environmental Virtue Ethics, Sustainable Development, Pragmatism

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