Page 27 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

xxvi Prologue

This book initiates the conversation around many facets of ecojustice broadly,
and gives new directions for approaching these difficult topics proactively. Most
educational questions span the globe; issues of justice can be derived from almost
every neighborhood, city, forest, stream, or mountainside. We learn by engaging in
physical geographies in different ways, not always generalizable yet definitely
educational.
Thus, education is the goal of ecojustice philosophy. Ecojustice recognizes the
appropriateness and significance of learning from dynamic place-based (science)
experiences and indigenous knowledge systems rather than depending on less
affective ethical imperatives for the much needed impetus for environmentalism
(Mueller 2009). When schooling is acknowledged as a small part of the larger edu-
cational domain in which we live and learn, then we turn to the knowledge, activity,
and practice embedded within communities. The larger educational domain pro-
vides all that we need to show personal and shared agency, environmentalism, and
sustainability. There is no need to indoctrinate individuals into a “green agenda.”
Rather, we strive to learn from the education of community people, those who pos-
sess a differentiated status of knowledge and skills. These traditional knowledge
and skills will take many different forms, and thus, can be found in every place that
has a “local” worldwide. Educating for justice needs educators who are willing to
engage with questions of how to live in relation with others and Earth’s others in
perpetuity.
We anticipate and hope this book will further develop interesting conversations
around which we might travel as science educators.
Given these ideas, this book offers some generative Perpetual Notion for further-
ing the conversation and developing homegrown talent, narratives, and ecologically
influenced knowledge, skills, and events. Ecojustice provides a platform to cham-
pion regional places and global relationships around coffee, literacy, materials,
schools, and so forth. There are a plethora of other examples that this book will
charge, and we would use this book as a nuanced lens for evaluating ideas.
If nothing else, let the debacle begin! There is plenty of room for absurdity, humor,
irrationality, irony, and scrutiny for interested scholars. How do we become more
aware of, say, what it takes to be on this big blue Orb? Stewart (2003, p. 36):
if I let my hair grow tangling
and cast off this coat and step
out of these shining shoes
could I become that wild
green man in autumn barefoot,
eating locusts, tasting the rich
lather of fermenting honey—
could I feel the hard storm coming and see
more clearly than I see now?

Then it is the charge that this book provides a space for cultural studies and
environmentalism not marginalized within the dominant literature. In some cases,