A volume in Transforming Education for the Future Series Editors Jing
Lin, University of Maryland and Rebecca Oxford, Air University
Transformative eco-education is environmental education that is
literally needed to transform and save our planet, especially during the
global ecological crises of our present century. Such education demands
inner transformation of many deeply rooted ideas, such as the following:
the Earth exists merely to provide for human comfort; the extinction or
reduction of other species does not matter; we are free to consume or
destroy natural resources at will but are safe from destruction
ourselves; and the Earth will continue to sustain us, even if we do not
sustain the Earth. Unless these concepts are changed, we will increase
global warming and add to the ruin of much of the Earth. This book
presents powerful ideas for transformative eco-education. At this time
of ever-increasing ecological crisis, such education is needed more than
ever before. We urge readers to use the ideas and activities in this
book with your students, develop them further, and create new
conceptions to share with other educators and students. The chapters in
this book provide key principles, of which the following are just a few.
First, educators can and should prepare students for natural disasters.
Second, stories, case studies, the arts, and hands-on environmental
experience, all enriched by reflection and discussion, can offer
profound learning about ecology. Third, education at all levels can
benefit from a true ecological emphasis. Fourth, teachers must receive
preparation in how to employ transformative eco-education. Fifth,
Indigenous wisdom can offer important, holistic, spiritual paths to
understanding and caring for nature, and other spiritual traditions also
provide valid ways of comprehending humans as part of the universal web
of existence. Sixth, transformative eco-education can be an antidote to
not only to environmental breakdown, but also to materialistic
overconsumption and moral confusion. Seventh, we can only heal the Earth
by also healing ourselves. If we heed these principles, together we can
make transformative eco-education a blazing torch to light the path for
the current century and beyond.
