Ecological Illiteracy
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
What is Education for?
The answer seems obvious. First, Education is for a purpose. It is to equip students with knowledge and skills to undertake their job roles (instrumentalism). Secondly, Education is a ‘good’ in and of itself, it does not have to lead to qualifications for skills and careers. Thirdly it is about challenge, shaping and changing personal identity, concerned with personal growth and development of yourself as well as those of communities (progressivism). And fourth: education has a role in equipping learners for social roles, changing power structures and challenging orthodoxy; it is education for social change (reconstructivism). Your curriculum may have all or only one of these elements, but there may be an emphasis on instrumental education - a need to acquire clinical skills for the NHS workforce.
However, the fourth element - reconstructivism, may well be absent . Does this matter in a nursing curriculum?
I think it does. There is an urgent need to reconstruct a new society and a new education based on sustainability. The reason is a looming crisis for global health based on such things as: a food crisis, the end of cheap energy and climate change. David Orr (2004) argues that current education practices have left students as ‘ecological illiterates’. This means that we have produced students capable of extraordinary feats of scientific and technological development, we have produced great artists and musicians, doctors, engineers, and physicists and yet the products of our universities have overlooked the most basic of all knowledge – the health of the planet upon which everything else depends.
Orr describes the difference between being Intelligent and being clever. Being clever means being able to develop the nuclear bomb, being intelligent means questioning whether we should have done it in the first place. Being clever means designing the car, being intelligent links particle emissions respiratory disease, obesity and our choices about personal transportation. Being clever designed Prosac, being intelligent wonders about the psycho-social causes of depression. More than that, intelligence links all human activity to the health of the planet. That includes understanding that planetary health is the foundation of all health. This is what Orr means (in part) by being ecologically literate.
We may ask ourselves whether our education is developing us as intelligent or merely clever? Are we able to link individual health with such things as soil erosion, waste management, resource depletion urban decay, water shortages and of course carbon emissions? Are we so focused on achieving particular skills for the NHS that we have missed the need to ensure there is a planet to pass on our children?
The Nursing and Midwifery Council is currently reviewing the standards used to develop nursing courses. There are many influences on those standards based on many consultations. The future of nurse education will be a result of Universities’ interpretations of the final document. Whether the standards will emphasise the need to be intelligent as Orr describes it, i.e. to be ecologically literate remains to be seen. Our future health will depend on it.
Orr. D. (2004) Earth in Mind. On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect. Island Press, Washington.
If you are interested in climate change and health see:
1. The Climate and Health Council www.climateandhealth.org
2. The Climate Connection theclimateconnection.org
3. The Campaign for Greener Healthcare www.greenerhealthcare.org/
4. The Climate and Health Council www.climateandhealth.org
5. The Centre for Sustainable Futures www.csf.plymouth.ac.uk
6. The Institute of Sustainability, Health and the Environment www.uwe.ac.uk/ishe/index.shtml
