Our Future is Our Choice Not Our Fate

Listening to an interview with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently, I heard him quote the writer/scientist Donella Meadows who titled an article, "Is Our Future Our Choice or Our Fate?" While on the surface the response to this question may be obvious, how we answer it actually tells a great deal about who we are and where we are headed. In addition, as educators the way in which we address this query has profound implications for the lessons we teach our children.

When Meadows wrote this essay in 1972, the "green" movement was in its early phases. Rachel Carson's seminal book Silent Spring was a decade old, Earth Day had been celebrated for the first time two years previously, and Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog was only four years old. We're in a different century now, and an entirely new generation of environmental activists has joined the struggle, but the motivation for those fighting to save the planet from destruction is just as strong as it was in the early 70's. Bill Mckibben, who wrote The End of Nature in 1989, said recently in an article, "We used to think that climate change was going to take a while. Twenty years ago...we thought it would be mid-century before we saw really big shifts. We underestimated how finely balanced the planet is, an illusion that finally had to crumble in the summer of 2007 when Arctic ice suddenly melted, decades ahead of schedule. Since then, we've seen the rapid spread of drought across Australia and the Southwest, the sudden destruction of western Canada's pine forests, the acidification of the oceans and worse. We've learned that climate change is not a future problem, not something for our kids to solve. It's a current crisis, one that our parents should have foreseen." The threats facing us are no longer hypothetical nor are they something so ethereal that we cannot imagine how they will affect us.

As adults and as educators, we have a responsibility to teach our children about the issues facing our world, and theirs, from ethnic warfare in Africa to the threats facing our environment. There are a variety of methods we can use to educate young men and young women, and there are many valuable educational programs ranging from Facing History and Ourselves to The Alliance for Corporate Sustainability at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. For students to understand the true nature of these problems, they must learn that the causes are varied, complex, and seemingly intractable. Students need to see that the world is a system and that what is happening in one area that may appear isolated is in fact integral to what is occurring somewhere else: the flapping of a butterfly's wing may in fact play a role in events across the globe. To teach adolescents otherwise is to insult their intelligence and stunt their intellectual development.

However, if all we do is show them that these problems and conflicts are inter-related and apparently insoluble, we consign them to a lifetime of being passive spectators rather than active participants. We have a responsibility to teach them the depth of the causes underlying the issues; just as importantly, though, we have a duty to help them see that there are ways to resolve the problems. At Crossroads College Prep, students learn about the variety of issues facing our world in many classes ranging from the interdisciplinary World Cultures/Earth and Environmental Science Curriculum in 7th grade to designing a sustainability project in 8th grade to Advanced Placement Environmental Science (APES) in their junior year; they also learn, though, that they can work on these issues now and maybe they can help solve them one day. For example, when the students in 7th grade learn about geology, they study mining and the problems associated with it, but they also create solutions to address run-off or pollution; the 11th graders in APES not only study the facets of water pollution but they are also part of the Missouri Stream Team program where they analyze and reclaim two streams, one in Wellston and one in a rural part of the state. The students learn about the problem, but they also realize that they can be agents of change. Teaching this way offers our students and ourselves a sense of hope, restores their faith that life can be better, and helps them comprehend that their futures are a matter of choice rather than a fate determined by someone else.

Students, the Web, and the Enlightenment

Checking out two recent websites reminded me again of the power of the web to excite and inform high school students as a critical component of their formal and informal education. While discussing the benefits of information on line may be tantamount to stating the obvious, I believe that it bears remembering how amazing our world is today with what is out there. Some of this information may be new and some may have been available for a long time; the important thing is how we expose our students to the available information and how they use it for their own purposes.

Just recently the British Royal Society unveiled a new website that gives a historical overview to scientific discoveries. In the format of a time line, the Royal Society offers information on seminal moments in scientific history that also correspond to what was occurring in the world in general at that time. By studying the time line a student can learn that the invention of a new measuring tool for angles in 1731 followed the publication of Gulliver's Travels in 1726. In the process, students may begin to see that what happens in one area or discipline may be connected to what is transpiring in another and that what may seem as coincidence may be the product of "great minds thinking alike." Such an approach also allows students to see that the lines between seemingly disparate disciplines may be our artificially imposed distinctions rather than barriers that exist in the "real world."

Beyond that, the Society is publishing the original scientific papers in PDF format that the British Royal Society produced when these discoveries were made. Students can read the thinking of the members of the Society as they grappled with these revolutionary moments in science and see how philosophers approached seemingly insoluble problems. The website is http://trailblazing.royalsociety.org/.

Also new this year is a class from Harvard University that is being televised by WBUR. Law Professor Michael Sandel's class on justice comes in weekly installments and shows students grappling with philosophical questions and the law. By looking at the morality and the legal aspects of lying or stealing and relating the teachings of different philosophers to these ever-present issues, viewers can experience for themselves being in a class that discusses the relevance of the teachings of Jeremy Bentham or Immanuel Kant to their own lives. Watching these classes makes for exciting television but it also returns one to school where professors challenged us with difficult questions without easy answers and made us see that these questions were not just fodder for late night bull sessions; they hold importance for us on a daily basis.

I thought of both of these websites as I recently watched the sophomores at Crossroads College Prep engage in an annual rite of passage known as the Enlightenment Salon. This project requires each tenth grader to research and analyze the teachings of an Enlightenment philosopher. After compiling their research, each student must write a persuasive essay arguing the view of his/her philosopher and write a Facebook profile of the philosopher. The truly amazing component of this interdisciplinary assignment arrives on the day of the Salon when students come to class dressed as their philosopher (complete with white wigs and pantaloons), and as their character give an introductory speech outlining their teachings and writings and then engage in an hour long debate on issues like natural law, the rights of man, and the existence of a deity. Students are assessed partially on how well they remain in character and how well they know the teachings of their philosopher as well as the view of others in the room. Such an assignment requires students to know the background of the philosopher but also the fundamental issues of the Enlightenment and the questions asked by these thinkers. Hopefully, they leave this major project with a better understanding of the Enlightenment, the intellectual dynamism of this time in history, and the way that this period has affected their world today.

Probably very few if any of our students used the Royal Society or the Sandel websites as they're very new. However, the information from the British Royal Society might have given our students even more insight into their philosophers and allowed them to read some of their actual writings. Michael Sandel's series on justice might have provided our students with an even greater feel for how pertinent these age old questions of justice are. As a result, they can see that while much has changed over history, many fundamental questions remain and their wrestling with these issues places them in good company with their predecessors. Whether the information comes from the web or a book, we hope that students take the opportunity to engage in analytical research, relate philosophical questions to their own lives, and realize that the joy of reading and studying comes less in finding answers but in finding even more exciting questions to ask.