Cycle 2 Reflection

 In reflecting on all of the various texts for this cycle, I kept returning to the idea of human beings putting up barriers between ourselves and nature. These barriers exist both in the physical world, in our societal structures like curriculum, and in our minds and, as Richard Louv says, “reduce the richness of the human experience.” I was struck by Jill Lepore’s exploration of breastfeeding and the commercialization of pumping both in its literal implications and how it can operate as a metaphor for the larger societal disconnect from nature. Lepore questions whether it is the mother or the milk that is really valued and explores how milk and breastfeeding have been commodified through the wide use of breast pumps. The pump itself is an artifice that separates mother and child, but in many cases pumping is used as a way to continue providing breast milk while returning to work because of the U.S. labor laws that only allow for three months of (unpaid) leave (Lepore). These laws and the work-obsessed culture of the U.S. could both be viewed as barriers to the natural (and recommended) experience of mother and child bonding through breastfeeding. I don’t think there should be shame or blame put on mothers for their choices around breastfeeding or choosing to go to work, but I do think that this represents one example of how both adults and children are conditioned by society to act in ways that take them away from interaction with the natural world. I am grateful that at my school teachers get a year of maternity leave and job protection, but I know that protection probably exists in large part because teaching is disproportionately female and teachers tend to have strong unions. I wonder how our country would be different if all women had the maternity leave rights that many teachers have and if those that needed it were afforded appropriate financial assistance. 

My literary brain also can’t help but consider how the discussion around breastfeeding can represent the larger disconnect between human beings and that which gives us life, the Earth. Louv powerfully addresses the therapeutic power of interacting with nature, for those with issues such as ADHD, and also because “as the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically.” This brief excerpt really hit home for me as a teacher. I have taught every academic level at our school, from resource (special ed.) to AP, and I think each and every student would benefit from more time in nature. The land-based education that indigenous peoples have been engaging in for generations is something can cannot and should not be replicated by mainstream schools because it is inherently tied to the indigenous lands and practices, as well as intellectual decolonization, but I do think the practice of teaching students to make connections between nature and academic concepts, to broaden their senses and their minds, is a worthy pursuit. In addition to the just physical barriers of the school building, there are several things that make such changes difficult. 

Earlier in quarantine, there was a movement in our school to reduce students’ screen time and to get them outside in some way, which I think is a good idea, but the value of actually being in nature wasn’t communicated to teachers or students. There is no “integrated curriculum” of the kind Jardine discusses. Each discipline is practically siloed off from the others; even as some teachers try to make connections between disciplines, making such connections is not an aim within the curriculum that is valued by the school as a whole. If students struggle to make connections between these anthropocentric disciplines, how can we expect them to make explore something such as the relationship between the paper on which the book they read is printed and the trees and broader ecosystem that led to that paper, or even themselves, to be in the classroom in a given moment? We cannot, unless we guide them to do so. I can’t say I know how to do that in full, but I think it requires a fundamental shift in our thinking, away from anthropocentrism and towards Aldo Leopold’s concept of the land ethic, with human beings as just one member of a land-community (Leopold, 1946/1966 as cited in Kissling and Bell, 2019). It requires a disruption of “our deeply held beliefs and images of understanding, self understanding, and mutual understanding...it also belies the desire to finalize, control, master, and foreclose on vital curricular issues” (Jardine, 1990). In other words, it requires us to see the world much more as Greta Thunberg does. She understands that the climate crisis imperils the Earth, and thus our home, so it requires immediate and complete attention. I remember the global school strike a few years ago; very few students from our school were part of it. While we want students to intellectually acknowledge there is a problem, we do not teach that disruption is necessary. We do not teach advocacy and “the ecological crisis is framed as a scientific challenge to be solved with the latest technology, not as a crisis rooted in modern cultural beliefs and practices requiring significant changes to daily living (Kissling and Bell, 2019).This isn’t advocacy for a political party, but for the earth itself.  But as the survey of the Pennsylvania teachers clearly conveys, teaching about climate change or environmental degradation is politicized and seen as a “controversial topic. However, I do find hope in the teachers’ responses. Many of them want to teach more about environmental issues, but they just don't have the professional resources and development. I imagine what our schools and society could be like if we gave not only the social studies teachers, but teachers in all disciplines, from the earliest grades, training and resources on how to teach about environmental issues and make students feel like citizens in a community of all nature.