{"id":7581,"date":"2019-10-28T07:45:53","date_gmt":"2019-10-28T07:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7581"},"modified":"2020-02-17T20:18:27","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T20:18:27","slug":"the-concrete-and-the-abstract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2019\/10\/28\/the-concrete-and-the-abstract\/","title":{"rendered":"The concrete and the abstract"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1905,\u00a0Liberty Hyde Bailey<\/a>, the American\u00a0horticulturist and botanist,\u00a0<\/span>wrote that \"The term environmental education is imprecise, theoretical,\u00a0<\/i>pompous and will always need to be explained<\/i>\u201d<\/i>. \u00a0<\/i>How right he has proven to be. \u00a0I lost count a long time ago of the number of times I've had to explain what it was and wasn't.<\/p>\n

Bailey's point endures. \u00a0The\u00a0term environmental education\u00a0<\/i>has proved to be a huge barrier to explaining the complex web of the biosphere,\u00a0humanity's utter dependency on it, and the imperilled nature of our inter-relationships. \u00a0And so it continues.<\/p>\n

The phrase has proved a particular barrier to getting government education departments (such as the DfE) to take environmental issues seriously in the curriculum, and it was John Smyth who noted a good few years ago that the adjective\u00a0\"environmental\" was always getting in the way of, and distracting from, the core focus that should be education and learning. \u00a0If only we'd spent the last 50 years talking about concrete curriculum issues instead of the abstract concept of environmental education we might have have gotten somewhere.<\/p>\n

All this came to mind when I was reading the website of Teach the Future<\/a>. \u00a0Here, their key goals are:<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u00a0a\u00a0government commissioned review into how the whole of the English formal education system is preparing students for the climate emergency and ecological crisis<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u00a0inclusion of the climate emergency and ecological crisis in English teacher\u00a0standards<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u00a0an English Climate Emergency Education Act<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u00a0a national climate emergency youth voice grant fund<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u00a0a national Youth Climate Endowment Fund<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u00a0all new state-funded educational buildings should be net-zero from\u00a02020; all existing state-funded educational buildings net-zero by 2030.<\/p>\n

If you click here<\/a>, you will find the detailed thinking behind each of these goals.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
How refreshing to see the phrase \"the climate emergency and ecological crisis<\/em>\" used in this way. \u00a0If you replace it by \"environmental education<\/em>\", you lose the power of the concrete in the confusing vagueness of the abstract. \u00a0Using concrete terms [ the climate emergency and ecological crisis<\/em> ], even though they are only place-holders for a more complex curriculum content that puts flesh on these bare bones, must mean that parents might understand what is being called for and support it.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
There must also be a chance that DfE will take Teach the Future<\/em> seriously because of this much clearer focus \u2013 and also, it has to be said, because it is coming from young people and not from old folk like me who've struggled over so many years at getting messages across.<\/div>\n

Here's to Teach the Future<\/em>. \u00a0Let's hope we do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1905,\u00a0Liberty Hyde Bailey, the American\u00a0horticulturist and botanist,\u00a0wrote that \"The term environmental education is imprecise, theoretical,\u00a0pompous and will always need to be explained\u201d. \u00a0How right he has proven to be. \u00a0I lost count a long time ago of the number...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}