The Identity & Vision of the Department of Interdisciplinary

Secondary & All-Level Education

Kurt Love, Ph.D.

November 2014

Charting a Path of Educational Relevance

Complementary Educational Content and Field Experiences

!Cutting Edge Interdisciplinary and

Critical & Eco Pedagogies for a New Generation of Teachers

!Scholarship and Practices that

Push Boundaries and Teach towards Peace and Sustainability

DISALE & Liberal Arts Complementary Partnership

Emphases, not exclusionary content

Liberal Arts: Emphasize content-specific foci

DISALE: Emphasize general and interdisciplinary pedagogies and frameworks

DISALE & Liberal Arts Complementary Partnership

DISALE (General Frameworks & Practices)

Liberal Arts (Content-specific)

PedagogiesTraditional, Liberal/Progressive &

Transformative FrameworksContent-specific practices taking frameworks

into consideration

Diversity & Sustainability

Foundational frameworks & general practices

Content-specific practices taking frameworks into consideration

Classroom Climate

Frameworks for: discipline, expectations, Teacher-Student relationships

Content-specific practices taking frameworks into consideration

Learning Theories

General frames for Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Social Cognitivism, Constructivism, and Critical

Constructivism

Content-specific connections taking frameworks into consideration

Learning Philosophies

General frames for Realism, Idealism, Pragmatism, Existentialism, Post-Modernism,

Critical Philosophies

Content-specific philosophies taking frameworks into consideration

MethodsInterdisciplinary, differentiated, culturally responsive, sustainability-based methods

Content-specific methods connecting with interdisciplinary, culturally responsive, sustainability-

based methods

A Present- & Future-Minded Educational Vision

Teach Today for a Better 2057

Our current group of traditionally-aged students in 2014 will likely retire by 2057

Even though students may come back to us during their graduate years, we need to think about our undergraduate students with their whole careers in mind providing a dynamic foundational framework of thinking that can be used for 43 years.

Furthermore…By the time Dr. Love retires circa 2044-2057(unless he wins the Powerball or Mega Millions earlier!), his traditionally-aged students then will be likely to retire between 2087-2100

A New Sustainable and Cultural Relationship with Nature

The latest UN Report on the Climate (by the IPCC) released this week said:

Fossil fuels need to be phased out completely world-wide by 2100

Renewable energies growth needs to increase from its current 30% to 80% by 2050

Another report by ecologists released this week said:

Currently, 29% of salt-water edible fish have declined by 90% representing a total collapse in fisheries

A total extinction predicted by 2048

Resist Myopic Thinking

It is imperative to prepare our teachers to have broadly encompassing visions with dynamic philosophical and pedagogical approaches

I know that doesn’t roll off the tongue with ease, but there it is…

A Vision

A Vision

Peace achieved through solidarity, affirmation & critique

Humans as deeply interwoven with nature (new ecological identities that are inclusive of culture)

Empowered democratic societies that grow structures and institutions with sustainability and regeneration as central frameworks.

A Visionary Mission for the Department of Interdisciplinary Secondary and All-Level Education

The Department of Interdisciplinary Secondary and All-Level Education is committed to preparing high quality teachers who are able to teach towards the needs of local and global communities, with an emphasis on urban settings.

CCSU/DISALE-prepared teachers, not only have the technical skills to teach today’s demanding curricula aimed at nurturing all students to succeed in a contemporary world, they also have abilities to empower their students to create mindsets and practices that are ultimately needed to help make the world more peaceful and sustainable.

Foundational Framework:Sustainability & Peace

Principles of Sustainability

Sustainability

Environmental

Social

Economic

Sustainability - Environmental

The Earth has the ability on global and local scales to replenish itself within a human generation (25 years)

Evolving mindset of humans as interwoven parts of nature and the Earth

Sustainability - Environmental

The Earth has the ability on global and local scales to replenish itself within a human generation (25 years) - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, TE

Evolving mindset of humans as interwoven parts of nature and the Earth- Social Studies, Science, English, Art, Music

A New Sustainable and Cultural Relationship with Nature

The latest UN Report on the Climate (by the IPCC) released this week said:

Fossil fuels need to be phased out completely world-wide by 2100

Renewable energies growth needs to increase from its current 30% to 80% by 2050

Another report by ecologists released this week said:

Currently, 29% of salt-water edible fish have declined by 90% representing a total collapse in fisheries

A total extinction predicted by 2048

“Progress” Creates Oppression

We are currently at the stage of global peak oil, and the next 30-40 years will very likely be focused on rapidly decreasing supplies and is connected to a current energy crisis (Zittel, 2007).

Access to freshwater is becoming increasingly difficult, especially for peoples in third world countries where freshwater sources are polluted or privatized (Shiva, 2005; Vorosmarty, Green, Salisbury & Lammers, 2000).

Global warming is creating increasingly unstable and unpredictable conditions in local and global contexts with experts predicting numbers of environmental refugees in the hundreds of millions (Bhandari, 2009).

Half the world’s population lives on $2.50 per day or less, and 80% of the world lives on $10 per day or less (Shah, 2010).

Children in cities have higher rates of asthma than children in surrounding suburbs (Kozol, 2005)

Is “Progress” Ecologically and Culturally Sustainable?

“Progress” as typically defined in the first world nations is the opposite of “sustainability”

Progress !

Technology!

Individuality/Isolation!

Capitalism!

Competition!

Movement away from nature!

Sustainability!

Cooperation!

Reciprocity!

Nurturance!

Interconnectedness with each other and with nature

Sustainable Environmental Teaching

Teach predictions and trends in climate change including pending societal stresses

Critique anthropocentric mindsets and reflected practices (in language, especially).

Teach nature-human partnerships and reciprocity (conviviality)

Sustainability - Social

Working towards peace (non-violent conflict resolution)

Solidarity - Affirmation - Critique of Power

Health & Wellness

Sustainability - Social

Working towards peace (non-violent conflict resolution) - Social Studies, Health, English, Art, Music, PE

Solidarity - Affirmation - Critique of Power - Social Studies, English

Health & Wellness - Health, PE, English, Social Studies

The Map of Diversity

The “map” of diversity has routinely deselected relationships with nature.

The privileged discourse in diversity studies is anthropocentric and has created an academic blindspot.

A Diversity Without Sustainability

Sustainable societies were those that had a strong sense of an ecological identity, which was culturally constructed like any other identity.

Diversity studies cannot be truly sustainable without ecological identities as an integral part of the discourse.

Currently, diversity studies favor Western, industrial culture as an endpoint for social justice. Students of color who have more access and success within the current structures of schools are used as an end point for social justice. The structure, itself, is assumed to be just through the perspective of Western, industrial culture.

Our schools are cultural vehicles forming all children to become docile workers in a capitalistic, consumeristic structure that creates a global monoculture that is ultimately unsustainable.

Privileging Humans & Omitting Nature

Racism, sexism (by extension, heterosexism), Capitalism, classism, Neoliberalism, religionism, globalization, and colonization can all be traced to a particular version of discrimination that favors humans as distant from nature (usually through technology, wealth and often reinforced militarily)

White, European, Christian, wealthy people in positions of domination have relied heavily on a narrative that treats them as God’s people who are right, fully human, have the moral doctrine (rationale), and governmental structure to rule others who are indigenous, poor (or outside of a capitalistic structure), not Christian.

The first and most important step is to see one self as being removed from nature in order to be part of today’s privileged, dominant group.

Neoliberalism’s RootsNeoliberalism, the favoring of “free market” ideology in business and non-business contexts, is borne out of a desire to accumulate wealth.

Wealth comes from capitalism, which depends on consumerism

Capitalism and consumerism are fundamentally against close relationships with nature and have long-standing practices of exploitation with those who are close to nature.

The global colonizers, Europeans, created racism out of desires to control, colonize, and capitalize from those who were initially closer to nature (subhuman)

Europeans viewed themselves as superior primarily because they became more technological (militarily, agriculturally, and through the mining of the earth), or created themselves and their self images as being increasingly distant from the earth and more able to control the earth.

Controlling the earth also meant controlling people of the earth. People who were not as technologically developed did not have the designator of being fully human.

People who European men did not see as fully human could be destroyed, manipulated, and exploited. People of indigenous societies, women in general, and poor people were all seen as being closer to the earth and were therefore routinely dominated.

European Colonizers & American Indians

Clash of two peoples with two different “ecological selves”!

European Colonizers: Nature for profit, land ownership, enclosure, capitalist mindset/values!

American Indians: Nurturance, reciprocity, sustainable mindset/values!

Genocide: From up to 18 million in 1490’s to 190,000 in 1890, up to 200 million Indians died in the Americas!

Land Domination

European Colonizers & West Africans

Clash of two peoples with two different “ecological selves”!

European Colonizers: Nature for profit, land ownership, enclosure, capitalist mindset/values!

West Africans: Nurturance, reciprocity, sustainable mindset/values!

Slavery: About 12 million captured and shipped to the Americas, 645,000 brought to the U.S., nearly 4 million slaves in the 1860 census!

Domination for profit via capitalism

Shift Away From Valuing Nature

Joseph Campbell stated that we can see the movements of a society based on the highest buildings in an area.

Shift Away FromValuing Nature

Gods and Goddesses

communicate through the

actions of nature in the forests

Gods and Goddesses

communicate through the

actions of nature and in growth/

harvest of crops

God (no Goddess) & salvation are found only

through Jesus. The Devil resides

in nature.

Shift Away FromValuing Nature

Shift Away FromValuing Nature

Government provides policies of morality

aimed solely at rights of humans

Transcontinental corporations heavily influence governments and national policies

through trade agreements creating the greatest negative impact on the global

environment

Shift Away FromValuing Nature

Indigenous Religions & Spiritualities

Pre-date Christianity

Pre-date Islam

Pre-date Judaism

Earth-based spiritualities

Found in all parts of the world

CREATING PATRIARCHY

Women are closer to nature than men;!Nature is wild, chaotic, and uncontrollable

Therefore...

Women are wild, chaotic, and uncontrollable

Adam & Eve

REALISM & PATRIARCHY

Women are closer to nature than men;!Nature is wild, chaotic, and uncontrollable

Therefore...

Women are wild, chaotic, and uncontrollable

Aristotle and Phyllis (Alexander the Great’s Wife)

"If thus it happened to me, an old man most wise, that I was deceived by a woman, you can see that I taught you well, that it could happen to you, a young man." - Aristotle

Christians & Earth-Based SpiritualitiesMovement out of nature and into “Human” as separate from nature

Nature is where Satan resides

Technology is Godly & righteous

Christian missionaries with indigenous peoples globally, views on nudity

Killing of at least tens of thousands of “witches” from 1400s-1600s

Continued persecution of paganism, neopaganism, and Wicca

Maintaining Patriarchy

A mass killing of women during the “Burning Times” in Europe & the US

Removal of a religion where women are spiritual leaders and the central spirit is seen as feminine. !Origin story: Goddess comes into her own, splits her self to have a male half who governs the physical plane (physical universe), and we are all aspects of the Goddess with the support of the God.

Science as a Product of Sociocultural Values

Galileo Galilei“The Universe is a clock”

Johannes Kepler

“The Universe is a machine”

Francis Bacon“For you have but to follow and as it were hound nature in her

wanderings...Neither ought a man to make

scruple of entering and penetrating into these

holes and corners, when the inquisition of truth is

his whole object”

Thomas Hobbes“Nature is dead, stupid

matter”

René Descartes“We can be the masters

and possessors of nature”

Aloha & Haole

Aloha & Haole

Aloha !“Together, we breathe the sacred breath”!

A consciousness that we are inescapably interwoven with each other and the earth. !What we do to each other and the earth, we do to ourselves.

Aloha & Haole

Haole !“One who is without sacred breath”!

A consciousness that does not include an awareness that we are inescapably interwoven with each other and the earth. !

A consciousness only of self and an ignorance of one’s energetic and spiritual impact. Often comes with little or no understanding of spirituality or the purpose of one’s soul (soul loss).

Sustainable Social Teaching

Teach skills of solidarity, affirmation and critique.

Teach mentoring and therapeutic skills of communication

Teach with the inclusion and generation of ecological identities in partnership with other social identities and diversity issues.

Sustainability - Economy

Strong local economies and responsible global commerce

Reintegration of the cultural commons

Sustainability - Economy

Strong local economies and responsible global commerce- Social Studies, English, Art

Reintegration of the cultural commons- Social Studies, English, Art, Science

Local & Global Economies

Rethink how we look at the school—to—job pipeline. Reframe our discourse.

Strong local economies = high employment Strong global economies = low employment

Many studies show the widespread benefits of developing local economies while having a responsible interaction with global businesses.

Rethinking our relationships with the cultural commons can help build stronger ties in a community and also strengthen teaching and learning experiences.

Sustainable Economies Teaching

Right now, the emphasis is on making us more “globally competitive.” This is at the root of many problems including unemployment.

Localizing economies has a different mindset and a different set of skills. Prepare teachers to be able to help their students be able to work in local sustainable economies.

Content Areas Connecting with Sustainability Framework

Sustainability

Environmental

Science, Social Studies, Math, English, Art, Music, TE

Social

English, Social Studies, Art, Music, PE/Health, Science

Economic

Math, Social Studies, Science, Art, Music

A Visionary Mission for the Department of Interdisciplinary Secondary and All-Level Education

The Department of Interdisciplinary Secondary and All-Level Education is committed to preparing high quality teachers who are able to teach towards the needs of local and global communities, with an emphasis on urban settings.

CCSU/DISALE-prepared teachers, not only have the technical skills to teach today’s demanding curricula aimed at nurturing all students to succeed in a contemporary world, they also have abilities to empower their students to create mindsets and practices that are ultimately needed to help make the world more peaceful and sustainable.

References

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/salt-water-fish-extinction-seen-by-2048/

ReferencesBateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York, NY, Ballantine Books. !Bowers, C. A. (2006). Revitalizing the commons: Cultural and educational sites of resistance and affirmation. New York: Lexington

Books. !Doppelt, B. (2010). The power of sustainable thinking: How to create a positive future for the climate, the planet, your

organization, and your life. New York, NY, Routledge. !Feagin, J. R. (2001). Racist America: Roots, current realities and future reparations. New York, Taylor & Francis, Inc. Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Loewen, J. W. (1996). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York, NY, Touchstone. Martusewicz, R., Edmundson, J. and, Lupinacci, J. (2011). Ecojustice education: Toward diverse, democratic, and sustainable communities. New York, NY, Routledge. Merchant, C. (1980). The death of nature. San Francisco, CA, Harper & Row. !Nieto, S. (1994). "Affirmation, solidarity, and critique: Moving beyond tolerance in multicultural education." Multicultural Education. !Plotkin, B. (2003). Soulcraft: Crossing into the mysteries of nature and psyche. Novato, CA, New World Library. Zinn, H. (2003). A people's history of the United States New York, HarperCollins.