It's Eco-critical
by naomismedbol
Views: 747
Vote Total: 4
Avg Star Rating: 2.8
>> Description
Want to inspire change? Start with education. Students need the tools and information to make informed decisions regarding their impact in their environment starting in elementary school and continuing through post-secondary.
The solution? Rework provincial, national, and international curricula to include a mandatory percentage of ecocritical theory in the classroom. This seems radical, but take into account the precedent set by feminism, civil rights, and, specifically, indigenous rights. All of these discourses are representative of marginalized sections of society, but are also becoming part of the discourse of society at large. The injustices and imbalances--inherent to the ideology that has allowed this binaristic culture to evolve--are being drawn into the limelight, so that a course at any level that fails to address these issues is an anomaly. Now, it is time for environmentalism to take its place on the stage of fundamental thought.
Once sustainability has made its way into the classroom, it can begin to filter outward, encouraging interdisciplinary problem-solving by providing the basics for the disciplines to communicate. Also, when it is part of the curriculum, it loses the marginalizing radical association, which will encourage it to filter more smoothly into society.
Until we begin to reimagine the culture-nature binary, its inherent fallacy will not be internalized by society at large. The previously cited precedents (feminism, etc.) took decades to make their way into the discourse. With sustainability, though, we as a planet simply do not have the decades to give.
