Page 69 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

5 Invoking the Sacred: Reflections on the Implications of EcoJustice for Science Education 45

Invoking the Sacred and a Sense of Wonder

By invoking the word, sacred, the authors emphasize that all living and nonliving
entities are worthy of respect and our inability, as humans, to fathom or control the
mysteries of life is the essence of sacred. Rachel Carson (1956) wrote about the
importance of nurturing a child’s sense of wonder. She argued that adults have a
duty to cultivate this sense and that they should focus more on helping children feel
than on helping children know particular facts. She wrote:
If facts are seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then emotions and the impres-
sions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. … Once the emotions
have been aroused – a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown,
a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration, or love – then we wish for knowledge about the
object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. (p. 45)
There is much debate in the literature about the extent to which emotions are hard-
wired, driven by our biology, or socially constructed, driven by cultural rules that
label emotions and specify behavioral expectations (Turner and Stets 2005). There
is also considerable debate about the extent to which emotions are conscious or
unconscious. Nevertheless, there is agreement that culture strongly influences
emotions.
Not only does culture influence emotions by setting up expectations about what should and
will occur in a situation; emotions are the driving force behind commitments to culture.
Indeed emotions are what give cultural symbols the very meanings and power to regulate,
direct, and channel human behavior and to integrate patterns of social organization. (p. 292)
Although this description of how emotions “function” takes on a mechanistic tone,
the idea that emotions give cultural symbols meaning is important. If we extend this
idea to the meanings children derive from their environment, both natural and
human-made, we can understand why invoking a sense of wonder is a crucial step
toward engaging children in wanting to know more about the places they live in and
the ecological relationships that support life.
When I was a child, my mother had the ability to notice, then stop, and help us
notice and revel in the beautiful and interesting things in the world around us.
Whether it was street signs in the city or wild flowers in the forest, she encouraged
our questions and helped us to know, label, and feel connected to our world. Now,
as a mother of my own children, I try to cultivate their sense of wonder. This sum-
mer, we had the incredible experience of looking at the moon with a telescope. We
saw the moon’s craters and other details we had never seen before, lit with a bril-
liant light. Each of us needed to look for a long time. Then, turning the telescope
toward Jupiter, we were able to see the planet and three of its moons. To me, this
was an exciting, humbling, sacred time. I was thankful to share it with my children
and consider it one of the highlights of our summer. Now that my children have
seen Jupiter and some of its moons with their own eyes, they have a special con-
nection to the bright star that is currently visible every evening in the sky above us.
They know the star is Jupiter. They point it out to me and affirm that connection.