During
this week, articles that we read centered on the broader questions of “how we
teach, how we learn and why that matters for sustainability?” The chapter
written by David Orr’s entitled “The discipline of problems and the problem of
disciplines” approached these questions by exploring the disconnects, obliqueness, and
the inabilities of our current educational systems of knowledge acquisition that
is so restrictive, specialized in context and lacks transformative learning
processes in the applicability of theorized knowledge and concepts as an
integrative and holistic system. Orr argued that before intellectual and
specialized knowledge can be taught, there is a need to firstly provide our
students with the systemic approach of studying a particular subject. He
suggested that they could learn about a particular subject or natural system
using the system approach by exploring the subject in its entirety in relations to other systems. Orr also argued that it is not just the perception and orientation of allowing students to engage in service-learning projects or service based on internship experience or the experiential-learning approach, but such teaching should be based on a combination of projects-oriented learning programs and knowledge acquisition to learn the holistic parts of a particular system. For example, instead of students working on intellectual topics of interests, they could develop topics of interest based on a particular river system. Let say, one student could talk about the social mobility along a particular river system, disease categorization, another could develop a project on the chemical composition of the river water, another could discuss its biological characteristics, while another student could create a project on its landscape and yet another could study the agricultural processes along the river. Using this approach would not only detail intellectual and scientific knowledge about what has already been discussed about that particular river system, but also tells its story in its entirety bringing into the discussion issues that are usually not narrated in the conventional academic literature. However,
one may argued that such learning methods proposed by Orr is already embedded
within the instructional curriculum of most developing countries that are
highly still depended on an agrarian economic system as well as in communities
were “indigenous learning” or “environmental learning” forms part of the
national instructional frameworks.
Romney’s
article takes us through the discussion of how dialogues have become
instrumental in the formation of peace-building process, conflict resolution
initiatives as well as in the dissemination and acquisition of knowledge. The
purpose of her paper is to “use art as a catalyst to engage the general public
in the process of discussing potential challenges confronting the group or community
at large” (Romney, p. 1). As much as artistic works can be considered as
catalyst to enhance progressive change in which communities and its members can
engage in challenging issue, we should be very cautious on how we frame the
“other” that needs to be educated to the “We.” The question that needs to be
asked in the article of the “West Side Story” that was planned to be staged at
the Amherst Regional High School is that, who are those that were to be
educated about the “others” that were been framed in the play? The exploration
of this question from the perspectives of race, ethnicity and gender in
sustainable development take us through the discussion of which we continue to
use the story of the “others” to inform current paradigms, which in itself may
reinforce sentimentality that we are trying the eliminate.
Works
Cited
Orr, D. 1994. Earth in Mind. Ch. 14 The
discipline of problems and the problem of disciplines.
Romney, P. The Art of Dialogue.
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