Sean Blenkinsop

Refusing to settle for pigeons and parks: urban environmental education in the age of neoliberalism

The institutionalization of neoliberal reforms that began to take hold in the 1970s were by and large ‘common-sense governance’ by the 1990s. While the growing predominance of neoliberal discourse and marginalization of alternatives in environmental education is disconcerting on the level of policy, this paper explores an equally troubling phenomenon: the deepening of a neoliberal logic, such that it pervades the way we understand and relate with the world. Specifically, this paper draws upon an experience at a recent environmental education conference whereby participants were invited to explore three place-based inquiries inspired by Aldo Leopold in an urban environment: what is happening here? what has happened here? and what should happen here? Although the intention of the workshop was to explore some of the challenges involved in implementing a critical pedagogy of place, many of the participants seemed unwilling to criticize the way in which an urban downtown core suppresses the more-than-human aspects of place. We contend that environmental education is a key arena for debating the limits of neoliberalism and explore how these well-intentioned, but ultimately uncritical responses, run the risk of being appropriated by the ecologically destructive logic-informing neoliberal natures.

Four slogans for cultural change: an evolving place-based, imaginative and ecological learning experience

This article focuses primarily on our research group’s year of preparation before the opening of a new K-7 publicly funded ecological ‘school’ for students aged 5–12. The article begins with a discussion of the reasons for seeking ways to change the values of a culture which fails to confront the consequences of its destructive practices, and for looking for a new approach to ecological education which sees the more-than-human world as an integral part of the learning situation. Five principles are introduced and explained—principles that have grown out of the evolving experience of the research group, and then four ‘slogans’, which have served to guide the ongoing work of development, are described and illustrated. As part of the purpose of this project to change social and cultural values, the change of values within the research group during its ongoing work is also explored.

A surprising discovery: five pedagogical skills outdoor and experiential educators might offer more mainstream educators in this time of change

ABSTRACT This article draws from the experience of outdoor and experiential educators working in the context of a radical, long-term formal public education research project. One of the accidental findings from the research is that experienced outdoor educators may have particular pedagogical skills, likely honed by the contexts in which they work, that can be of use to mainstream educators trying to expand their pedagogical repertoire, teach outdoors or be more environmentally focused in their practices. The article begins by contextualising the Maple Ridge Environmental School Project, describing the researchers and methods and explaining how the research team came to their insights. A discussion follows of five pedagogical skills identified by the researchers that outdoor and experiential educators may possess which might be offered more clearly to classroom teachers and formal teacher training processes and/or be more clearly enunciated for those involved in formal and informal outdoor and experiential training contexts.

Michel Foucault Goes Outside: Discipline and Control in the Practice of Outdoor Education:

This paper is concerned with if, and how, measures of discipline and control are involved in outdoor and experiential education. Using the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, author of Discipline and Punish (1975), we shall explore how educational practice may be used to control people and to render them into “docile bodies.” We follow this with an examination of what Foucault calls the three means of correct training used for the creation and maintenance of docile bodies: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgments, and examination. Through the use of examples we will proceed to argue that outdoor and experiential education programs do exercise mechanisms of control that may at times operate contrary to purported goals. Thus, using Foucault as our guide, we examine the question of discipline and control, together with the concomitant issue of the relations of power within our society. While recognizing that discipline and control are, at times, necessary and desirable, we will argue that outdoor and experiential educators should understand how negative relations of power operate so that they may avoid unwittingly incorporating them into their practices and programs.

The Lecture as Experiential Education: The Cucumber in 17th-Century Flemish Art

This article uses an unconventional format to problematize a common dichotomy found in the theory and practice of experiential education. The article comprises the contributions of five authors and begins with one author’s description of a potential real-life scenario that provokes the question of whether an art history lecture might be understood as experiential education. Three of the remaining coauthors respond individually and independently to this question, and the final author joins with the first in the concluding comments section. The key consensus of the responding coauthors is that simplistically equating the Deweyan notion of primary experience with physical, tactile activity is a limited and limiting understanding of experience in education and that in fact, under the correct circumstances, a lecture can and even should be part of experiential education. Beyond this, the authors encourage educators to think carefully about the educational trajectory and contextual histories of the learners with whom they work. Finally, the two authors of the concluding comments suggest that the field, to do justice to the educational possibilities of all experiences, must begin to move beyond John Dewey while finding ways to overcome the deeply entrenched dualistic concept of experience that continues to affect our practices and theorizing.

Experiencing Philosophy: Engaging Students in Advanced Theory.

In this paper, we will argue, predominantly using examples tested in the crucible of our own teaching, that there is a place for experiential education in the teaching of advanced theoretical ideas. As experiential educators trained as philosophers of education and working in faculties of education, we regularly encounter students with little or no history, experience, even aptitude in engaging philosophical texts and concepts, and as such, finding ways to better enter those discussions is an important pedagogical project. In this paper, we will describe three experiences that we have designed over the course of our attempts to respond to the aforementioned challenge. In the first example, John Dewey and the Sticky Rope, the activity has been constructed to help in understanding a particular philosophical text. The second activity, A Question of Framing, is designed to help make sense of an educational discussion on a particular aspect of pedagogical practice. The final activity, Martin Bubers Encounter on a Knife-Edged Ridge, is a material incarnation of a written metaphor of the philosophers own creation. We conclude this paper by suggesting that our experiences using these activities and a myriad others offer insight into how experiential educators might consider the use of the visceral and somatic experience as a means to enter and engage in deeply philosophical and theoretical content.

Boys being boys: Eco-Double consciousness, splash violence, and environmental education

ABSTRACT This article shares three vignettes, drawn from the life experience of its authors and five years of research at two schools, to illustrate the “choice” many males are forced to make between normalized “masculine” indifference and a stigmatized caring relationship with the natural world. We suggest this dissociation results, for some, in a kind of eco-double consciousness. The first vignette draws on memories from a male author encountering typical threats of violence for continuing to “proclaim” care for forested places. The second describes a cis male child who at the age of eight dubs himself “eco-boy,” but by 10, is resigned to hiding his ethic of care in order to fit in with other boys. The last vignette examines an instance between two six-year-old cis boys, a female researcher, and several ants. We suggest shirking from the significance of these commonplace experiences with the adage “boys will be boys” is an excusatory move and that educators ought to be aware and address gendered expressions of power, violence, and care at a young age when the necessity for an eco-double consciousness first emerges. The conclusion emphasizes the need for educators to trouble masculine norms by finding ways to respond to the normalization of ecological violence, to keep open the possibility of developing eco-care in young males, and to trouble the notion of “boys being boys.”

Saying Yes to Life: The Search for the Rebel Teacher

The chapter starts with suicide and ends in rebellious possibility. We begin by highlighting Albert Camus’s consideration of suicide, and in particular his assertion that in the act of choosing not to exercise our ever-present radical freedom to commit suicide there exists both a negation, saying no to suicide, and an exaltation, of saying yes to life. Camus’s purpose in this is to have us actively consider why we are choosing to stay alive and, as such, rebel against the possibility of suicide—and with purpose, choosing to say yes to life. We then focus on the distinction Camus draws between revolution and rebellion to allow us to more deeply explore his concept of the rebel and the shared role that negation and exaltation play therewith. By exploring Camus’s existentialist concept of freedom in order to name both a particular negation and exaltation for our times, as he was doing for his own time, we meet Camus’s challenge to consider, name, and act upon that which we choose to say yes to. The chapter concludes with an exploration of implications for environmental educators who want to adopt, and build upon the initial work presented in this chapter in pursuit of becoming creative, rebel teachers.

Self-Deception in the Classroom: Educational manifestations of Sartre’s concept of bad faith

Abstract This article explores an important section of Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous early work, Being and Nothingness. In that section Sartre proposes that part of the human condition is to actively engage in a particular kind of self-deception he calls bad faith. Bad faith is recognized by the obvious inconsistency between the purported self-knowledge of an individual and ways of acting and being in the world that are demonstrably in defiance of that stated position. This article begins by exploring examples of this self-deception in education along with a short query into the role pain avoidance might play in the development of this particular skill. The article then goes on to offer a series of manifestations of bad faith that Sartre identified along with possible examples of how each example, perhaps ‘excuse’, of bad faith might appear in education.

From Waiting for the Bus to Storming the Bastille: From Sartrean Seriality to the Relationships that Form Classroom Communities.

One of the tasks of Jean‐Paul Sartres later work was to consider how an individual could live freely within a free community. This paper examines how Sartre describes the process of group formation and the implications of this discussion for education. The paper begins with his metaphor of a bus queue in order to describe a series. Then, by means of Sartres analysis of the storming of the Bastille, the discussion expands to show how a series becomes a genuine group. Finally, suggestions are offered, extrapolated from Sartres theorizing about groups, as to how teachers might create and maintain genuine groups in and across schools rather than having them remain merely collections of individuals organized from outside. Throughout the paper, the implications of Sartres insights into groups and educational settings are examined.