The power of the buy-out

Earlier today, I sent an email to Sandra Steingraber after learning of her recent Heinz Award for her investigative, scientific, yet creative writing. It came with a $100,000 prize, which she is dedicating to the fight against fracking (drilling beneath our feet, homes, and schools for natural gas).   You can read about her decision to do this:  http://www.alternet.org/story/152427/why_i%27m_donating_my_heinz_award_money_to_the_fight_against_fracking
Below is an excerpt from my message and some other thoughts inspired by information I looked up:

The fight against fracking is going to be a tough one since our country seems to have turned its back towards the environment and even science.   Perhaps all those environmental pollutants are affecting brain cells too. [Sandra has written about the impact of chemical pollutants on our bodies in her books and regular columns in Orion Magazine.]  We truly are addicted to fossil fuels and the false hope that "finding more" will fix our problems.

Have you ever read the poem "The Last One" by W.S. Merwin (available at http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0310/031013.htm)?  The expressions of loss in this piece could easily apply to fracking as well as trees.

I showed the Lorax in one of my classes this week and was struck by the eerie relevance of the messages from the early 1970’s to today. Economy/jobs vs. a healthy environment and good habitat. I saw an ad of local citizens from the northern tier of PA praising Chesapeake Energy for bringing them good fortune, development (cough, cough), and jobs. It could have been the Once-ler.

For an example of what we are up against in this fight, all you have to do is read the information from the webpage of a single company:

"..Chesapeake has 2.4 million acres under lease in the Marcellus and has already paid almost $2 billion in lease bonus and royalties to farmers, families and townships across Pennsylvania ... Chesapeake has 1 million mineral owners in 16 states. To put that in perspective, about one in every 300 Americans has an oil and natural gas lease with Chesapeake.  [I don't even know how many of these companies exist, but there are several.] And they have been very well rewarded. We’ve paid out $9 billion in lease bonuses over the past 5 years, about $5 billion in royalties over the past 4 years, and another $2 billion in taxes over the past 5 years.   And every one of those numbers is going up daily. The lives of millions rest on us getting this issue right and utilizing this American Treasure."

Sigh.  Why do these statements scare me so?

Today, there were thousands of activities through the project Moving Planet all around the world -- all aimed at reducing our dependence on and moving past fossil fuels (see http://www.moving-planet.org/).   And in our region?  Nada.  Sigh. But I guess when you are part of the buy-out described above, who is going to protest?  A state that is in the midst of a gold-rush-like frenzy with the fracking craze and that is populated by people who believe the claims about all the jobs and money that will come is certainly not complaining.  Hey, this Commonwealth only contributes 1% of the global carbon dioxide to the global atmosphere.  (Excuse me while I cough some more.)

Sigh.

This week, an article appeared in International Business Times entitled "Alarming Poverty Rate: Is U.S. Becoming a Third World Country?" (see     
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/213562/20110914/poverty-u-s-china-u-s-census-bureau.htm).  Now anyone who has traveled to the Global South knows that this is a bit absurd.  BUT, such alarmist titles should make us think long and hard about "business as usual".  Simply put, it is not working.  Perhaps we need to consider something new, something like a green economy, perhaps?

Calls for redefining prosperity in the past have been futile.  How much of an economic and social crash will it take?

When prosperity eludes us

A friend wrote a piece yesterday while reflecting on the 10th anniversary of 9/11: http://growmercy.org/2011/09/11/just-another-10th-anniversary-9-11-reflection-and-a-call-to-real-change/comment-page-1/#comment-54397.  I think it is beautiful.

Perhaps I am growing cynical.  The result of an eternally frustrated optimist, I guess.  For what it is worth, here is the off-the-cuff reaction I wrote on Stephen's blog (instead of working on my grading and lecture preparation).

Stephen,

In the most general sense, things have not really changed.  Our worst characteristics have perhaps become more fully exemplified (fear, discrimination, a failure to understand difference but a tendency to stereotype, hypocrisy, etc.).  As you state, “our churches were suddenly full”, but sadly, the preaching was too often of retaliation, rather than forgiveness.  I was having great difficulty with all the memorializing over the past week.  For what purpose?  To fuel the anger and hatred? To sharpen the state of fear?  To honor the fallen from that day?  What about all those who have died fighting (sometimes in a country not at all involved in the attacks) or at the hands of our military (perhaps in retaliation)?

One of my favorite stories that appeared over the past week was surprisingly enough from CNN: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/10/remembering-911-an-unexpected-gift-to-america/.  The story of the Maasai gift says much about the sense of compassion that remains amongst some cultures.  Have we been as thoughtful in their times of drought, and now, the pipeline explosion?  Or are we still so self-focused that empathy escapes us?

In 2010, Pakistan suffered extreme flooding – the worse in 80 years.  A death toll near 1000, 20 million people affected.  Did we pay much attention?  Not really.  After all, it is an Islamic country and we have sadly lumped all of “those types” together and associated them with 9/11.  After all, bin Laden was found there. (Please know that I am being sarcastic here – just to be clear.)  I still lament the loss of human life and know that even the poor and even the evil, have someone who loves them and is grieving over the loss.

Meteorologists have linked the unusually heavy monsoon flooding in Pakistan to the hottest summer on record and massive fires in Russia in 2010.  Something called an abnormal Rossby wave.  I have no idea what that is, but I am sure that our climate change deniers in Texas (on fire literally and figuratively this year) and in the flooded northeast/mid-Atlantic region would never succumb to the idea that maybe we should pay attention to the climate models.  Or at least the idea that Mother Nature can get pretty cranky sometimes and perhaps we should treat her planet and her people a bit nicer.

So we lick our wounds from the heat waves, and fires, and floods, and hold memorial services “to remember”, but we don’t ask what needs to be altered in our lives, our lifestyles.  We go on.  After all, we are survivors.  Nothing changes.

Water, water everywhere?

I am a water person.  Growing up on the shores of a Great Lake will do that to you.  When I walk along a shoreline, paddle a canoe, or go for a swim, I find it to be soothing, an escape from the stresses of work or life.

Yesterday, I went for the last swim of the season at the local community pool.  It was a cloudy day, not the type that attracts a lot of pool-goers.  Which was just fine with me.  I love when the pool is quiet, free of the screams of delight and the “wake” from people jumping off the side into the lane where I swim laps. 

As I glided through the water, I couldn’t help but think how cool and refreshing and comforting it felt.  Cool water is better for swimming laps.  It feels faster somehow.  But I also began to think about the trouble that water (or lack thereof) has caused this year.  As I was swimming, people in states from North Carolina to New England were still cleaning up from Hurricane Irene’s flooding rains.  And major rains are predicted for the upcoming week possibly followed by the remnants of not just one, but two hurricanes/tropical storms.  In the northeast, water is abundant, too abundant in some places.  In parts of my state, August precipitation levels were at an all-time high for any month, ever!

Meanwhile, areas in the south like Texas have not only had an incredible streak of hot weather, but also a severe drought.  The U.S. Drought Monitor (http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/) labels the south as being a D4 level of drought intensity (“exceptional”).  Funny choice of terms since I typically associate the word "exceptional" with good things, like a job well done.  According to the Lower Colorado River Authority, the ten months from October 2010 through July 2011 were the driest for that 10-month period in Texas since 1895, when the state began keeping rainfall records. During that same time period, Texas has been battling its worse wildfire season in history with over 3.5 million acres burned already and new fires blazing as of yesterday.

Occasionally, there are news reports of the extreme drought in the Horn of Africa, especially all the starving refugees from Somalia.  The water levels at Kenya’s power dams were so low that electric companies had to begin rationing electricity at the end of July leading to blackouts.  What little coverage there has been, the reports make it sound like this is a new problem.  Two years ago, my Maasai friend from Kenya told me about the problems that the already long-running drought was causing for pastoralists, their livestock, and wildlife.

Check out the graphic at this website (http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/human-conditions.php) to get a sense of the number of people who don’t have “reasonable access to safe drinking water” (defined as the availability of at least 20 liters per person per day from an improved source within 1 kilometer of the user's dwelling).  How many of us would walk this far for drinking water when we can just carry our little plastic bottles around?  Sigh.  Do you feel at least a little guilty if you water your lawn or wash your car?  I do neither.

Northern Africa has been in the news a lot this year due to the political uprisings.  Just recently, while some celebrated the rebel take-over of the Libyan capital or pondered over the newly-found documents that show ties between Libya and the CIA, many may have missed the fact that people in Tripoli were becoming desperate because Gadhafi loyalists had cut off water supplies to the city.  Cutting off food and water is not a new tactic of warfare, but I can’t imagine what that must be like.  Remember, this is a desert region with a coast along a sea (i.e. saltwater).

Only 1% of the world’s freshwater (~0.007% of all water on earth) is accessible for direct human use. "Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink" says Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  Yet in this state (and others), millions of gallons of water are mixed with unsafe chemicals and blasted down into the Earth to release tiny bubbles of methane gas.  Yes, we are willing to sacrifice molecules that are essential to life, H₂O, to extract some more fossil fuel.  And who says we aren’t addicted to oil and gas?

Recently, while discussing the protests in Washington D.C. about the tar sands pipeline (a protest really about climate change and the President's broken campaign promises), my students asked if there was any issue that would cause me to engage in civil disobedience.  Without hesitation I replied, "..if they ever were to start piping water from Lake Superior to the southwest."

Musing on Hog Island

 

Being here at Hog Island

reminds me of my home, my place

where I grew up on the shores of Lake Superior.

I am a water person.

Not the type who spends time

lying on the beach or riding on power boats.

I love the craggy, irregular shorelines

where spruce and white pine and birch

bow down to pay their respects to the vast blue.

Being here with the Osprey family

behind the kitchen, outside my bedroom,

reminds me of a former colleague.

He retired before I had the opportunity

to talk to him about his project.

The one that reintroduced Osprey into Pennsylvania.

And now I know

of Steve Kress and Project Puffin

and other seabird restoration projects.

I recently reviewed data,

50 years of it from a hawk watch near home.

The positive impact of banning DDT was clear.

The age distribution, the numbers

of migrating Bald Eagles and Osprey

are better now, so I am hopeful today.

 

Being here, I think of people

who saved this island and other special places.

A family linked to Henry David

who saved the work of a great poet, Emily.

I am intrigued by the picture

of Millicent Todd Bingham and Rachel Carson

and the ties to Audubon.

What would have been lost

if Rachel hadn’t written about the silence of spring?

Did Scott Weidensaul inspire the flyway initiative?

Lately, I have been reading

about nature and environmental writing

and the impact writers have had on conservation and awareness.

Bill McKibben asks what metaphors,

what type of writing we need now

For 21^st century conservation, for the many threats of today?

Not Muir, Leopold, Brower or Abbey.

But who?

As I have been watching the water,

the seabirds, the intertidal pools,

I also wonder what each of us will do.

To make a difference,

To preserve a special place,

To continue the stories and provide hope for others.

The Healing Power of Peaches

I have been a bit down lately.  Perhaps it is the sad state of political affairs in Washington.  Perhaps it is the fact that a week of August is now past and I have worked too many hours this summer instead of taking time to enjoy the season like I should.  (Don’t even get me started about how many people tell me that it must be nice that you college professors have the summer off.  Harrumph.)  Lately, even during my walks through the woods with my dog—usually a time devoted to not thinking, but simply listening, enjoying—I have been ticking off a long list of tasks that need to be done before the fall semester starts or lamenting all the projects that I once again didn’t get to.

Or maybe it isn’t politics or work at all that have caused this state of melancholy.  Perhaps it is because so many of my former students are getting married this year, and I am starting to feel like grandmother!  Or maybe it is because so many friends my age are beginning to bury their parents, or are facing death themselves.

I am usually an optimist, sometimes painfully so.  Having this trait sets you up to be disappointed, to be brought down hard, often.  Did I really believe that during the recent debt-ceiling debate/fiasco the politicians would focus on the good of the people and the country, instead of themselves and their chances of re-election?  Had I hoped that the U.S. would finally make a serious commitment to confronting an international climate change policy that would be better than the Kyoto Protocol that expires all too soon?  (Oh yeah, we didn’t sign that agreement, did we?)  Could the President at least acknowledge the atrocious situation in east Africa and the need for humanitarian aid?  And how unrealistic was my list of summer projects, anyhow? 

I am typically equally optimistic—and heartbroken—about the state of the environment.  I often believe that all of the hard work of conservationists and environmental educators, along with some human ingenuity, will coalesce to begin to change attitudes and priorities and some solutions.  If we could only show some stories of progress and success, even more of us might start thinking about saving the planet, or at least preserving or restoring a little bit of nature around our homes.  And I continue to hope that all my efforts and those of my colleagues will finally get a few more people outside, a few more children to once again experience the wonders of the natural world rather than the virtual ones they live in.  If they could get over their deficit, Richard Louv could start writing about other societal ills.

As I ponder my gloomy state of mind, I wonder how much it has to do with the fact that I spend so much of my time these days dealing with environmental issues and conservation – be it through teaching or my scholarship.  My research students asked me a few weeks ago why, knowing what I do about the science of climate change, I don’t get depressed.  (At least they haven’t noticed that I have been less cheery than normal.)  Over the summer, they were progressing through their phenology project and the series of research articles I had given them to read.  And now they were coming to the conclusion that their future was indeed grim.  Great.  So much for my mentoring and being a source of inspiration!  I do not remember exactly what I said to them, but it was probably something to the effect of …at least we know that we are trying.  We have to start somewhere.

My students (and Bill McKibben) are right.  The number of environmental concerns and unsustainable practices we are confronted with is staggering.  The college-age youth/young adults are just about to enter the “real world” and it is weighing heavily on them.  My generation tries to prepare our children and students for success, but, in reality we have left quite a mess for them to resolve.  And there are not guarantees for success.

In searching for readings for a fall seminar course on “Environmental Writing for the 21^st Century”, I started skimming an anthology last night:  “American Earth:  Environmental Writing Since Thoreau.”  In the introduction, Bill McKibben, in writing about the link between environmentalism and environmental writing says:

The [American environmentalism] movement—so often driven by a piece of writing—has won many great battles.  There are hundreds of millions of acres of land conserved and laws passed to protect the most insignificant of flora and fauna; regulations have cleaned the air and water. 

What, a ray of hope?  But he continues:

And yet the war goes badly.  So far the images and metaphors that these and other writers have produced—the rich heritage of American environmental writing, on which the movement continues to draw—have proved insufficient against the forces of expanding commerce and daily habit that drive global warming.

Sigh.  I am not sure why I am drawn to Mr. McKibben’s writing since it has a way of bringing us optimist types down—quickly and hard.  Who else titles a book “The End of Nature”?  He continues:

But there is no closure in this struggle.  To look down that list [over environmental battles that have been won] is to realize that most of these battles were fought around the margins.  The places we’ve managed to preserve, with few exceptions, were high, rocky, cold, or otherwise remote, and hence of limited economic value.  The fights we’ve won have so far been mostly about smoothing the rough edges of progress—catalytic converters for cars and highway beautification, but not mass transit, much less bicycle cities.  …But as we set about the work that faces us now—the work of reorienting our lives to ward off the apocalypse that science now predicts—we must continue to find further images, further metaphors.

Bill, you are right of course, but really?  Can’t you find some hope or examples that are more uplifting?  And yet you keep trying, through your own writing and activism.  But is this the message I want to give to an incoming group of freshman?  Will they be the ones to find the right metaphors that will finally make a difference in a place other than a margin? 

~~~

This morning – the skies were murky, a perfect match for my mood.  I tried not to think of work during the walk with my dog and instead wondered what happened to the Field Sparrow I had heard all week.  In its place, I heard the lonely calls of a Yellow-billed Cuckoo and some Mourning Doves, the hollering of a Pileated Woodpecker, and squawking Blue Jays.  Were they all annoyed with the state of the world too?  As I came back down the hill to where the forest and old farm field meets, I heard a lot more bird commotion.  A Cooper’s Hawk was perched on a snag, close to a crow’s nest and within striking range of the Barn Swallows swooping over their insect-hunting grounds. 

I was reminded of the recent incident on campus where a Red-tailed Hawk had somehow caught a young crow and was precariously balanced on a lamp-post trying to annihilate its prey while being bombarded by other members of the crow family.  My students had spotted this while returning from lunch and ran it to get me.  We watched the struggling bird in the talons suddenly go limp as the hawk squeezed hard, probably snapping the crow’s neck.  The hawk then proceeded to start ripping apart the flesh.  The scene was fascinating, in sort of a morbid way.  I was most pleased that the girls had thought to come and get me to share in the moment.

Now there is little chance that an accipiter would take out a crow this morning or any day, but it could very well make breakfast out of a barn swallow.  Given that I had just watched the newest brood of young swallows sticking their hungry beaks out of the nests in our barn, the loss of a parent at this point would not be good.  Yes, I know that there is violence and both winners and losers in nature, but have you ever seen baby Barn Swallows?  I think that this is the second batch of babies in our barn this year, but it is possibly the third.  As I said, I have been rather busy with work and not noticing the things I usually do.

Before heading back inside, I walked up to our newest peach trees which are producing a real crop for the first time this year.  I see that the bees and wasps and maybe some birds have taken small bites out of the fruit on the highest limbs, so I harvest the ripe and almost ripe drupes.  I can cut around the flesh wounds created by the insects when I slice some fruit for a cobbler later.  The not-quite ready specimens will quickly ripen on the sunny kitchen counter along with some tomatoes that I have set out. The fruit flies (Drosophila to my science colleagues) which seem to spontaneously generate in our house will be pleased with what I have gathered this morning.

I realize that I am hungry and bite into the soft golden-orange flesh of one of the peaches.  It is sheer perfection, the juice runny down my chin, the sweet flavor and aroma being too wonderful for mere adjectives.  I look around at fog-drenched mountain.  The Cooper’s Hawk has flown off and the swallows have resumed collecting breakfast for their young.  I bite into a second peach.  Such indulgence I think, realizing that life is actually pretty good.  And I wonder, despite all the abuses that we throw at Mother Nature, why does she continue to bless us with things as wonderful as I have experienced this morning?  Do we really deserve gifts as remarkable as these fresh peaches?

I head back inside with my T-shirt full of treasures, ready for baking and ready to have a great day preparing for that new group of students who will arrive on campus soon.

Remembrance

I have been neglectful of this blog for too long.  I suppose it is largely because work and family, but mainly work, have consumed much of my time.  It was so much easier when I was on sabbatical in the fall with time to think and write and daydream.  There are many angles for a post on work and prosperity or the woes of working too much.  But these are not thoughts that caused me to pick up pen to write today (I really did write this out by hand first).  I write because of family.

Five weeks ago, a beloved aunt, my mother’s sole remaining sibling, died.  Her body had grown weary from a weak heart and late stage Parkinson’s disease.  She suffered a stroke and passed from a coma to a more peaceful place.  Then this morning, I received news that one of her daughters, my cousin Deb and once close friend, died from liver failure.  A mother, a grandmother, she was just my age – way too young to die.  But long ago, she chose a path that led to this point.  I want to cry, to reach back in time and pull her down a different passageway even though I know that would have been futile.  She was much too stubborn and rebellious.

So instead, I turn to writing.  Now one does not normally link the loss of a close childhood friend and relative to the theme of this blog (prosperity).  But when months ago, I heard that Deb had been rushed to the University of Michigan Medical Center and was on life support, I was overwhelmed with memories, happy ones of our younger days.  I was worried for her, of course, and scared that we might loose her.  But I kept thinking of all the silly things we did as kids.  She pulled through that crisis, but only for a short time.  But the flood of memories and stories are still with me today.  And so I write.

I heard that during my aunt’s funeral service, the minister chose to focus on her suffering in recent years.  Why didn’t he focus on the wonderful wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and friend she was?  The warmth that she exuded made everyone smile.  She readily welcomed anyone who knocked on her door (or most likely just walked in because that was the way their home was).  And there was always food to share.  Good food and great bakery.  I felt horrible that I couldn’t attend the funeral, but I think the minister’s words may have made me angry.  Hers was a life to be celebrated.  My sermon would have been very different.

Theirs was a home of love.  Lots of it.  And a home filled with lots of kids and commotion, giggles and squabbles.  Eight children and a very big dog in a small house is going to result in chaotic moments!  But this was always a favorite destination of mine – this little green house.  This is where the extended family gathered on Christmas Day for dinner, where grandma stayed when the snow was too deep at her farm and she could no longer snowshoe to the outhouse.  This is where my cousins and I listened to the Archies, looked through catalogs to pick out our first bras (long before we needed them), and shared secrets about boys and career dreams.  Deb wanted to become a neurosurgeon.  I had only figured out that I wanted to be some sort of doctor and go to Africa.

 In summer, we often hung out at grandma’s farm where we wandered through the abandoned hay fields that now grew “wildflowers’ and lots of grasshoppers.  The flowers were destined for a bouquet for grandma’s crowded table next to the bowl of sugar cubes; the grasshoppers were destined for a fishing line or a jar where the boys would try to toss them down our shirts later.  I still hate grasshoppers.

We wandered the dirt road, climbed trees to get the green apples that gave us stomach pains, and rigged up “sprinklers” with clothespins clipped on the end of a hose flung over the clothesline.  Our backsides would be black from sliding down the tar paper roof of the root cellar, we jumped off precariously high piles of hay bales, and tried to catch wild kittens in a barn no longer save for dairy cows, much less little girls.  At this age, we really didn’t think too much about the risk of our choices.  Although I usually knew that I would get scolded by my mom for getting too dirty.

Grandma made rag rugs on a loom out of material salvaged from old clothes.  We spend countless hours as kids playing dress up with the clothes – wherever they came from.  Before they were cut into strips and rolled into balls, we up-cycled them into costumes for Ms. America pageants.  After all, we couldn’t reach the pedals on the loom, so we might as well just play.  Or eavesdrop on the adults through the hole cut into the floor to allow the heat to rise upstairs from the wood burning stove.  We would be plopped on the beds covered with grandma’s hand-sewn quilts (also made from salvaged material) and surrounded by comic books.

When were older, we often joined with other relatives to go bowling or to cruise along the canal.  We went to the drive-in or Big Boy for late night meals that were never healthy, but at that point we could eat crappy food and not gain an ounce.  That changed for me soon enough, but Deb always seemed to be stay thin.  Back then, the newspapers didn’t tell us about the health risks of these addictive habits.

We lived two hours apart so went to different high schools.  We competed against each other in swimming.  I could never beat her although I always got my fastest times when she was in one of the other lanes.   But then again, I couldn’t catch her when we played games at the farm either.

It was in college that we started to drift apart.  I saw her often enough on campus.  I was pursuing a degree in science but I never saw her in those courses, despite that earlier dream of being a neurosurgeon.  I did see her partying a lot.  Occasionally, we would go to the Pizza Hut for the lunch buffet to see who could eat the most slices of pizza.  We did the same with grandma’s pancakes when we were younger.  I never won, but often felt sick to my stomach for trying!  It never seemed to faze Deb.

Deb married and had babies early.  I moved on to graduate school to become a different type of doctor than I originally imagined.  I would get updates from my mom and, if I was home visiting family, I would occasionally run into Deb.  Sadly, I never really got to know her children living as far away as I did.  My own children would be born much later; I am not sure if they remember the one time they met her at that little green house before her mom and dad moved to a senior living apartment complex.

Perhaps that was our last conversation.  Or maybe it was at my grandmother’s funeral.  Deb had braided grandma’s long snowy white hair for the event, noting that she had been the only one gram allowed to play with her hair.  She was probably right, but I wasn’t in the mood to rekindle our competitive sparring from years gone by.

This is a family that has seen much tragedy.  The father, my uncle, had suffered serious health problems from a major fire at the paper plant he once worked for.  He now has Alzheimer’s and may not understand the news he will be told about his daughter today.  Several of the children had serious health problems when they were young.  Two brothers died in their 30’s.  Parents should have to see their children die first; the father just lost his third.  Despite a large family, low income, and string of misfortunes, this family was always generous – always ready to share food, stories, love, hugs, and laughter.  I am sure that this is what gives them all the strength to handle all that life has thrown their way – an unfair share, if you ask me.

To me, the wealth in all of this are these types of memories, the great times that we had together, and the immense amounts of love shared, without ever saying the words.  I hope that Deb remembered some of these rich moments and that she had found the peace that she has needed through her rocky, rebellious life.  Rest in Peace, dear cousin.  I miss you!

The Role of Higher Education in Redefining Prosperity - Part III

I am woefully behind in posting to this blog due, in part to a very busy semester, and also due to my work with a phenology project that has expanded beyond what I had expected.  You can learn more about this project at http://watchingtheseasons.blogspot.com/.

The final essay on the theme of higher education's role in redefining prosperity was written some time ago (the end of January to be exact) by Ms. Caitlin Campbell, but I wanted to share it because of the message she has for us.

Next up, I will be posting some student essays about the impact of nature.

Innovating our Education to Innovate

            Last Tuesday, I watched Obama’s State of the Union address as I worked out in the Moravian College’s South Campus fitness center. I found myself bopping along on the treadmill, nodding and smiling—I’ll admit, sometimes I’m more enchanted by our president than what he says. But when he addressed education I was listening carefully. My mom has been teaching New Jersey middle schoolers for as long as I can remember. After Moravian, a career in education probably awaits over the horizon for me too. When Obama spoke, with his index and pointer finger glued to his thumb, about leaving behind “No Child Left Behind” for a better plan, I actually pumped my fist. “Educate to Innovate,” he called it. I liked the sound of it. Then he went on describing how we should charge up our curriculums with science, math, and engineering. I went to a science and math high school, I was still with him on the plan.

            But eventually he shifted topics and I left the fitness center to watch the rest of the address in my room. Even as he moved on, I kept thinking about “Educate to Innovate”. I thought “Innovative Education to Innovate” would promise more than a different version of the same. When I later read Jeremy Rifkin’s “Empathetic Education,” I didn’t pump my fist in excitement, but I was nodding, smiling, and highlighting the whole way. The United States will only regain our edge when we make our students well versed in the issues confronting our global community. We can give our next generation the tools to fuse molecules or build new infrastructure, but unless they understand the context and implications of their work, we’ll have prepared a fleet of workers to build dead-end bridges.

            I think middle school and high school are the places to develop the basic skills a global citizen needs, including recognition of what Rifkin calls our “global family” and a “shared biosphere”, and Colleges and Universities should be the place where these basic skills are honed and the student develops her career in the global community. Institutions of higher learning should no doubt continue to educate on global issues, but I don’t think values like empathy can be easily instilled or even called up in a college student who has never cared before. Before colleges can do their best to inform and inspire, we need to get our future college students on track. When “Generation Me” —as social researcher Sara Konrath calls the current group of “self-centered, narcissistic” college students— grow up and start families, we might have a new generation of “Me-Me-Me!” entering our school system.

            But of course an education revolution won’t happen over night, so what can our colleges and universities do right now? The best way to promote solutions to our global challenges is to inform, take Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Jungle for example. But whose responsibility is it to inform? Professors can do wonders by enlightening students, and certainly colleges should promote global literacy in their classrooms. But once outside of the classroom, some of the best teachers can be college students themselves. And united, these young people can be an incredible force as the were in the COP15 discussions.  Thus, I think colleges and universities should help students to not only connect with the material, but also connect with one another. As Paul Hawken said in his Commencement Address to University of Portland’s Class of 2009, humanity is already, “reconstituting the world,” and it is “the largest movement the world has ever seen.” Enlighten American students to see the global issues and show them that we are part of a global community. Give them these tools and help them find one another. I’ll bet the result will be incredible.

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Rifkin's opinion piece on Empathic Education can be found at  

http://chronicle.com/article/Empathic-Education-The/65695/