[Reflection] Environmental Education

The most recent issue of Alternatives Journal (Vol. 36, No. 5, 2010) focused exclusively on environmental education in Canada, and provided a list of 54 university programs related to 'the environment'. Skimming the cross-Canada directory, it is interesting to see the range of programs considered to fall under the broader category of 'environmental education' - whether it's the Tourism and Outdoor Recreation program at Capilano University in British Columbia, the Sustainable Agricultural Systems program at the University of Alberta, or Planning at the University of Waterloo. At many universities, environmental studies is offered by the Geography Department (at Carleton, for example, it is officially known as the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies). In other institutions, environmental studies is a stand alone department, distinct from Geography. In some cases environmental science is offered in place of environmental studies - and needless to say the focus in such institutions is more on the biological/geological/ecological processes of the Earth's system than on the relationship between human social structures and the natural world.

So who cares? Well, as I've discovered this week - it's a bit of a sore spot for (some) geographers. Despite the pop-cultural 'common sense' belief that geography is the study of maps, or at best unique places, and that it's leading association is the National Geographic Society, in fact one of the discipline's most important underlying themes has been the study of humans and their environment, at all the complex levels you can interpret the dialectic (and this theme long outlives the rise of popular environmental awareness in the 1970s and the growth of 'environmental education' programs in the last decade). Hence you have within one department a spectrum of scholars - from those who study ice cores in Antarctica to others who write about ecofeminism in small Indonesian communities. But as the environmental movement ramped up, and demand for environment-based courses popped up in universities, the geographers who didn't manage to take ownership of environmental studies felt, well, dissed (for lack of a better word). Rhetorical questions were asked: If they don't think environmental studies is fully enmeshed in geographical studies, well then what do they think we actually do here in Geography - look at maps all day?

While on the one hand it's easy to see how it's a sore spot for geographers, on the other hand, it's something geographers should learn to get over. In acclaimed geographer Ron Johnston's words: "We should just get on with it" (10). That is, we should keep doing the work that we do, and strive to do it well. In doing so, we (that is, geographers - a group I'm learning to refer to self-referentially) should worry not about other disciplines 'stealing' environmental awareness from us. Rather, we can embrace the opportunity provided by a unique discipline with a rich history of anthropo-ecological awareness, and just get back to it.

References
Johnston, Ron. "Critical Review: Geography (or geographers) and earth system science," Geoforum, 37 (2006): 7-11.

[Reflection] On the Academy and the Public Good

The acclaimed American geographer Gilbert F. White always believed that "the role of higher education and research is to serve the public" (B.L. Turner II, "Contested Identities," 2002: 59). It is often suggested that academics play a role in changing the world by serving the public. We hear it all the time, and for the most part we don't disagree. Serving the public is a humble, perhaps noble, cause. It sounds right, and it feels right. But upon further thought, it is not entirely clear how higher education and research accomplishes this goal... especially in this day and age. Do professional academics really serve the public by publishing articles in journals catering to the distinct needs of a small research community? Is the public good really served when throngs of first year students trudge in and out of the lecture hall each week, to sit amongst hundreds of peers whom they view as competitors for those few 'A's the professor has promised to dish out?

Those of us in the academy who think we serve the public need to take some time to consider how it is that we do so. It may be important enough to continually revisit this question: How is it that we are contributing to the public good? In doing so, I believe it is inevitable that we will come across various structural pressures stemming from our contemporary political economic setting that cause us to go about the motions while losing sight of our goal of serving the public. For students, a university education is more and more becoming a commodity. For academics, teaching and researching is more and more becoming merely a means to an income and a semblance of job security. In this way we often feel powerless when we ask ourselves how we can do a better job of serving the public. We'd like to attend that community event, but we don't have time; We'd like to write that meaningful opinion piece, but it's not recognized as a respectable, refereed publication; We'd like to spend one-on-one time with our students and have them work in partnership with local organizations, but the university has implemented rigid grading standards with hopes of beating other institutions in the annual post-secondary rankings - not to mention we have multiple classes to teach. There is pressure to treat our roles in the academy as just any other day job, and oddly enough that pressure seems to correlate with rising tuitions...

Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but it seems that the more private our universities become, the harder it is to see how academics are able to serve the public. In this way, perhaps the best way to ensure that researchers and educators in the academy serve the public is to focus their efforts on keeping the influence of privatization out. Perhaps the answer is to make our universities truly public spaces - welcoming places with distinct attainable goals of societal contribution. Perhaps we should make tenure dependent upon the impact academics have in their communities, not how many publications they have ... just a (heretical) thought. Either way, the suggestion that academics play a role in the public good shouldn't be just another meaningless and hollow mantra - it would be nice if it was the truth.

[Reflection] Between Reproduction and Contestation

I started a PhD in Geography today. While the next four years are certain to offer numerous opportunities to expand my knowledge and scholarly abilities, I will undoubtedly also be faced with tremendous challenges. One worry that I have about taking on a doctorate is the possibility of getting sucked into the permanent meta-coma of academia. In this nightmare I become just another ‘head-in-the-clouds’ academic; I live in a theoretical world of utopias and dystopias; I play into the structures of power and dominance that exist in society rather than actively work to contest them; I lose sight of the responsibility that comes with a degree from an institution of higher learning.

As a Master’s student I experienced similar anxieties. It’s easy to live the sheltered life of a student, to get sucked into the daily humdrum and processes of academia. But it can be a vicious circle: In order to spend all your time as a promising scholar, you need the funding do to so. In order to get funding, you need high grades, publications, and conference presentations, and so you spend all your time trying to fulfill the role of promising scholar (both intellectually and esthetically). Yet the circle is just that – a circle. There appears no end to the road. You keep going and going unless you realize the only thing tying you down is gravity. The other roads only exist once you decide to take a step off the beaten path.

My worry is that in pursuing a doctorate I will forget about the other roads. This would have severe implications for the (acknowledgedly romanticized) images I have of being an activist academic. In the very first reading for our doctoral seminar (an article titled “Learning to Become a Geographer: Reproduction and Transformation in Academia,” by Harald Bauder), I was struck by a sentence in the opening paragraph: “By the time academic geographers assume faculty positions, romanticized ideas of being a knowledge-seeking scholar or Gramscian-style intellectual who changes the world may have been dashed by the realities of academic practice” (671). Is it ironic that I maintain a blog dedicated to the idea of the Gramscian-style intellectual? Or is this a sign that I am conscious enough about the possibility of becoming what P.E. Willis calls an “unconscious foot soldier” (2004: 390) that I will be able to stay conscious after all?

Our political economic trajectory isn’t helping. The academy is changing along with our society. More and more we are being trained as machines, taught to complete tasks that will work to facilitate economic growth. In her latest book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Martha Nussbaum refers to this problem as “a crisis of massive proportions and grave global significance”. The neoliberalization of the university may be working to squeeze out the activist in us academics, slowly converting the ivory tower into a prison watch tower, where thinking outside the box is akin to a jailbreak.

All this to say… so much as I am looking forward to taking on the next step in the academic ladder, I’ll have to remember that I’m climbing along the boundary between the reproduction and contestation of contemporary academic structures. If I can hold onto this thread, I may be able to make it out of here with the ability to think and act critically still in tact!