Part One: THE ISSUE OF SUSTAINABILITY

I. The Problem of Sustainability

II. Two Meanings of Sustainability

III. A Tale of Two Systems: Sustainability in International Perspectives

IV. Fragments of Strategy

Part Two: EDUCATION

V. Ecological Literacy

VI. The Liberal Arts, the Campus, and the Biosphere: An Alternative to Bloom's Vision of Education

VII. A Prerequisite to the Great Books of Allan Bloom: A Syllabus for Ecological Literacy

VIII. Place and Pedagogy

IX. Education and Sustainability: An Approach

X. What is Education For?

XI. Is Environmental Education an Oxymoron?

Part Three: WHAT KNOWLEDGE? FOR WHAT PURPOSES?

XII. Having Failed to Manage Ourselves, We Will Now Manage the Planet? An Opinion from the Back Forty

XIII. What Good is a Rigorous Research Agenda if You Don't Have a Decent Planet to Put it On? (Apologies to Thoreau)

XIV. Food Alchemy and Sustainable Agriculture

XV. Epilogue

Notes

Index

Our efforts to build a sustainable world cannot succeed unless future generations learn how to partner with natural systems to our mutual benefit. In other words, children must become “ecologically literate.” The concept of ecological literacy advanced by this book’s creators, the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, goes beyond the discipline of environmental eOur efforts to build a sustainable world cannot succeed unless future generations learn how to partner with natural systems to our mutual benefit. In other words, children must become “ecologically literate.” The concept of ecological literacy advanced by this book’s creators, the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, goes beyond the discipline of environmental education. It aims, says David Orr in his foreword, “toward a deeper transformation of the substance, process, and scope of education at all levels”—familial, geographic, ecological, and political.
The reports and essays gathered here reveal the remarkable work being done by the Center’s network of partners. In one middle school, for example, culinary icon Alice Waters founded a program that not only gives students healthy meals but teaches them to garden—and thus to study life cycles and energy flows. Other hands-on student projects described here range from stream restoration and watershed exploration to confronting environmental justice issues at the neighborhood level.
With contributions from distinguished writers and educators, such as Fritjof Capra, Wendell Berry, and Michael Ableman, Ecological Literacy reflects the best thinking about how the world actually works and how learning occurs. Parents and educators everywhere will find it an invaluable resource....more

Paperback, 296 pages

Published October 1st 2005 by Sierra Club Books (first published November 1st 1991)