Class 13 / IDS 3920 / Spring 2004

Sense of Place V:  Field Trip to Downtown Fort Myers: Urban Sustainability

Reading

None!

Writing

The last essay is due in Class Thirteen.
 

Environmental Education
 

Short Paper Five is a four to five page typed, double-spaced essay on environmental education. Your paper shall be evaluated according to the criteria presented by the assessment rubric and by your section instructor.  You should address the following concerns:

1) David Orr, in his essay “Ecological Literacy”, claims “. . . all education is environmental education.  By what is included or excluded, emphasized or ignored, students learn that they are a part of or apart from the natural world.  Through all education we inculcate the ideas of careful stewardship or carelessness.” (p. 90)

Since everyone experiences an environmental education, what indicators or characteristics would you suggest differentiate an educative from a mis-educative environmental education.  In other words what, in your opinion, characterizes effective environmental education? (two pages)

2) In the essay, “The Liberal Arts, the Campus and the Biosphere . . .” David Orr writes “A genuinely liberal education will produce whole persons with intellectual breadth, able to think at right angles to their major field; practical persons able to act competently; and persons of deep commitment, willing to roll up their sleeves and join the struggle to build a humane and sustainable world.  They will not be merely well-read.  Rather, they will be ecologically literate citizens able to distinguish health from its opposite and to live accordingly.  Above all, they will make themselves relevant to the crisis of our age, which in its various manifestations is about the care, nurturing, and enhancement of life.  And life is the only defensible foundation for a liberal education.” (p. 108)

What sort of environmental education or education for sustainability do you think is appropriate in general in higher education? (one or two pages)

3) Thinking of Florida Gulf Coast University, your own College, and your particular course of study and major, what suggestions would you make in order to meet the learning outcome of ecological literacy? (one to two pages)
 

Final Project

You should have a plan by now that has been approved by your instructor.  How do you want to share your learning in the Colloquium?  In what way can you integrate and demonstrate the knowledge and understanding you have gained?
 

Field Tripping

NOTE:  some instructors may choose to hold this class in downtown Naples—please check with your instructor to be sure!  Click on the link below for directions to downtown Fort Myers.
 

Directions to Downtown Fort Myers Field Trip