Encyclopedia of American Studies

Environmental Studies

During the last thirty years of the twentieth century, environmental education (EE) emerged as an important means of helping Americans understand their roles and responsibilities as stewards of natural resources. Thanks to public awareness and effective political decisions, many areas in the country now have cleaner skies and less polluted rivers. But critical problems remain and society clearly needs the guidance of trained specialists in environmental science, law, ethics, engineering, health, political science, and communications.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, more than 150 colleges and universities grant degrees in environmental science and another 400 conduct EE programs of varying size and scope. Virtually all states implement EE programs, and more than ninety percent of middle and high schools have green curricula and ecology clubs. Each year the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) provide grant and seed money to encourage universities, secondary schools, and primary schools in EE projects.

At all levels EE is developing as a discipline in its own right, essentially holistic and interdisciplinary. Using the environment helps students and teachers see the connection between economic, political, legal, and cultural systems. It challenges them to apply skills in mathematics, scientific observation, and analysis; in reading, writing and speaking; and to appreciate the environment in the broad context of American history and culture.

The first steps in environmental education were taken in the colonial period, with naturalists stirring awareness of the continent's singular natural values. The Travels of William Bartram remains a major American work of literature, natural history, philosophy, and adventure. The poetry and essays of William Cullen Bryant; Thomas Cole's paintings of the Hudson River Valley; artist George Catlin's depiction of Native chieftains in the last hours of their glory; and the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau all contributed in the nineteenth century to intellectual environmental consciousness.

The crusading articles of John Muir in the Century magazine inspired establishment of Yosemite National Park in 1890. Ten years later Gifford Pinchot and his family endowed the graduate Yale School of Forestry to train forest managers�a pioneer cadre of science-based professionals. At other universities nature study focused on the natural history of plants and animals; later, conservation education responded to soil erosion and flood disasters. For twenty years beginning in 1936, Carl Bucheister directed a well-respected summer workshop for teachers and adult leaders at the Audubon Camp of Maine. Later, as president of the National Audubon Society, Bucheister advocated attention to natural resource concerns in public education.

In 1970, the same year he sponsored the first Earth Day celebration, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin introduced the Environmental Education Act to encourage nationwide programs and disburse grants. Subsequent amendments and laws have continually expanded training and internship programs. The Council for Environmental Education, the National Project for Excellence in Environmental Education, the North American Association for Environmental Education, and the National Environmental Education Advancement Project at the University of Wisconsin�Stevens Point (UWSP) are all involved in the Environmental Education and Training Partnership (EETAP).

Among individual academic institutions Yale in 1972 renamed and revamped its forestry program into the interdisciplinary School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, focusing on ecology, public policy, law, and tropical resources. " The challenge," declared Yale president Richard C. Levin in 1999, " extends to understanding and managing the environment worldwide and to integrating environmental, economic and developmental concerns." Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, has made a major commitment to ensuring that all students are environmentally literate and responsible, incorporating environmental issues within teaching disciplines. An English course uses such novels as John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath to discuss how the environment relates to culture; and a mechanical engineering course focuses on getting energy efficiency out of machinery. Antioch New England, in New Hampshire, offers master's and doctoral programs in environmental education and resource management, combining classroom studies with independent "field-based learning."

Elsewhere in the country, the forestry school at North Carolina's Duke University, once mainly concerned with managing Southern forests, now addresses land-use planning, water resource policy, and international environmental policies. Duke features a cooperative "3-2 program," designed to produce a balance between liberal and technical education and yielding both bachelor's and master's degrees. At UWSP, all students must meet an environmental literacy requirement regardless of their majors. Among smaller schools with distinctive programs, Oberlin in Ohio features courses in sustainable agriculture and forestry, environment and society, ethics, art, and architecture. Rollins College in Florida examines natural and cultural systems with field experiences in Florida and the Caribbean. Considerable EE is conducted outside the normal academic routine?at nature centers, zoos, parks, and in industry. The National Environmental Education and Training Foundation, as an example, presents achievement awards to such groups as Alaska Heritage Tours, for its Marine Science Explorers Program, helping students "to learn ways to conserve and protect the subarctic marine environment"; and to Businesses for Chesapeake Bay, educating businesses about reducing and preventing pollution in states and communities around the bay. At Porter, Indiana, near Chicago, Indiana Dunes Environmental Learning Center opened in late 1998 to introduce elementary students to choice natural areas and encourage hands-on stewardship projects in their school neighborhoods.

Despite significant progress, EE still has a long way to go. Only one-fourth of the states incorporate environmental studies into existing kindergarten through twelfth-grade curricula. "The vast majority of college students are not enrolled in programs focused on the environment," according to Richard Wilke of UWSP. "While many institutions offer environmentally related minors or majors, they do not require even basic instruction in environmental literacy." And David Orr, of Oberlin, fears an overemphasis on theory without active involvement, asserting that environmental studies must rise from "I know, I care" to "I'll do something." In a related vein, Jacqueline Denise Ruffin wrote about "The Terrain of Exclusion" (in the winter 1996 issue of Race, Poverty & the Environment, published under the auspices of Earth Island Institute) about a wilderness backpacking trip conducted by the University of California Extension. She wrote: " As the only person of color and as the only person from a lower-income background, I found no one really understood the relationship between social injustice and common notions of environmentalism."

Another concern derives from the readiness of corporations to provide teaching kits, activity books, readings, and quizzes, all touting the corporate view, for example, that increased carbon dioxide induced by global warming makes plants grow larger and cutting down mature trees promotes the growth of forests; and attributing the quality and abundance of our food supply to modern agricultural practices, including the use of pesticides.

But EE has come a long way, as evident in a growing body of literature, including Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (1992) by David W. Orr and Greening the Ivory Tower: Improving the Track Record of Universities, Colleges, and Other Institutions (1998) by Sarah Hammond Creighton. More schools are giving EE priority. As a prominent case in point, the University of California at Los Angeles Institute of the Environment was established in 1997 "to explore the entire spectrum of scientific and social concerns affecting the environment on earth, and to pioneer integrated, interdisciplinary strategies for environmental education, research, and outreach." Its first yearlong cluster course, Environment 1A, is titled "The Global Environment: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. "

Michael Frome

Bibliography

Creighton, Sarah Hammond, Greening the Ivory Tower: Improving the Environmental Track Record of Universities, Colleges, and Other Institutions (MIT Press 1998).

Crumbley, Paul and Melody Graulich, eds., Search for a Common Language: Environmental Writing and Education (Utah State Univ. Press 2005).

Frome, Michael, Green Ink: An Introduction to Environmental Journalism (Univ. of Utah Press 1999).

Hay, John, Mind the Gap: The Education of a Nature Writer (Univ. of Nev. Press 2006).

Johnson, Edward A. and Michael J. Mappin, eds., Environmental Education and Advocacy: Changing Perspectives of Ecology and Education (Cambridge 2009).

Kellert, Stephen R., Birthright: People and Nature in the Modern World (Yale Univ. Press 2012).

Lieberman, Gerald A., Closing the Achievement Gap: Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning (Calif. State Education and Environmental Roundtable 1998).

Odum, Eugene, Ecology and Our Endangered Life-Support Systems, 2d ed. (Sinauer Assoc. 1993).

Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (Bloomsbury 2010).

Orr, David W., Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (State Univ. of N.Y. Press 1992).