Page 123 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

100 K. Love et al.

greater emphasis on their short-term interests (and investors’ interests) rather than
longer-term implications for local people or the long-term survival of their busi-
nesses. While many businesses in Pittsburgh are changing (e.g., car companies),
corporate greed still exists and that fact alone is an ample rationale for strengthen-
ing environmental education.

Educating Generation R (Responsibility)

Well, I have my rights, sir, and I’m telling you I intend to go on doing just what I do! And,
for your information, you Lorax, I’m figgering on biggering and biggering and
BIGGERING and BIGGERING, turning MORE Truffula Trees into Thneeds, which
everyone, EVERYONE, EVERYONE needs! (Dr. Seuss 1971)

Many students learn to take for granted that “green is good” through environmental
education and working at various projects in and around their community. Look at
how vulnerable students become when they do not also recognize how corporate
entities are manipulating them through green deception and even outright fraud.
The media sells ideas to students who are eager to buy them, which is where
environmental education has become very vulnerable and requires more in-depth
considerations of the ideologies promoted through the green. Ideas, then, are
endorsed and carried forward to the next generation, leaving many students with
false conceptions of the way the natural world works. A favorite example is the
popular SUV commercial where a large SUV is being driven very fast through mud
and water, and up abandoned roads to a final “peaceful” often, green destination.
Where is the balance to this powerful commercial? Who will mediate the messages
that students receive? Millions by the day if they watch television, listen to the
radio, or read a magazine. Where is the “split screen” that shows the cultural and
environmental erosion that occurs from this one-sided view? Who owns the land?
How much fuel was used to rip and tear up to this green place? How many SUVs
is one too many for this stretch of road? The list of environmental questions that
could be included as part of the environmental and science education curriculum
and that mysteriously do not appear on these kinds of marketing schemes is endless.
This green vulnerability shows a massive disconnect between the way the economy
is promoted within the curricula of schools, media, and so forth, and the way nature
works and relations to it.
Blumstein and Saylan (2007) argue that we should have personal responsibility
as the hallmark for the next generation of environmental education (maybe changing
the term Generation E to Generation R). When linked with consumerism and the
wants of people, a focus on the true “costs” of things, and the impacts that people
have on the environment is based upon responsible (environmental) choices which
ought to become the most important focus for developing environmental education.
Having students create projects or work on aspects of service whereby they are
active, participating members of their community might go a long way in helping
them realize the impact they each have on the environment. But it is not enough.