Charles Saylan’s interest in environmental preservation grows out of a lifelong connection with nature as climber, mountaineer, sailor and commercial captain. One of his early professional ventures was a small mountaineering shop that grew into one of the first manufacturers of Goretex mountain gear on the West Coast. This was the beginning of an entrepreneurial career in which he successfully created, developed and managed diverse businesses in the service, manufacturing and entertainment sectors.

After several years in Italy as a freelance photo journalist and writer, he returned to the U.S. Frustrated by the accelerating disappearance and degradation of the wild places he cared about, in 1998 he co-founded the Ocean Conservation Society to help protect ocean ecosystems through scientific research, education and public outreach.

He is the author, with Daniel T. Blumfield, of The Failure of Environmental Education (and How We Can Fix It), published by the University of California Press. He will be the keynote speaker at the Green Curriculum Institute at the 2011 Green California Schools Summit.

 

How important is what happens in K-12 classrooms to the goal of attaining a sustainable future?

K-12 education provides a structured opportunity to build scientific and functional literacy in our society. These are critical to embracing and adopting sustainable lifestyles.

Public education is the basis for creating what John Dewey called the “organic union of individuals” that is necessary to sustain a democracy like ours, and for that democracy to flourish.

K-12 is as important as any of the steps that we need to take, but at the same time we need to keep in mind that it may be unfair to put the burden of change on our children and on future generations. The responsibility for protecting the biodiversity that sustains life as we know it falls on all of us.

 

What would it take for a system that often has trouble teaching students the basics to find the time and resources to fully embrace environmental education?

Given the cost-cutting fever that we’re all currently embroiled in, it will take a radical change in the way that our society regards education and the importance of education.

Currently we tend to see education as a stepping stone in the building of an economic engine, but we don’t really place education at the forefront of our political priorities – and that seems to me to be a remarkable disconnect. Frankly, I don’t understand it.

Enriching ourselves as a society through public education is a cornerstone of a functional democracy, the democracy that our founding fathers envisioned. The ability to understand the complex nature of the modern world and the problems that we face is important to making sound decisions as a society.

At the end of the day I think that we need to recognize the importance of education to the perpetuation of our way of life and we need to fund it accordingly.

 

Are there ways that improving environmental education could improve the quality of education in general?

Environmental education traditionally has been viewed as science education, but it’s much more than that. When my co-author and I wrote our book, we suggested that environmental education, if it is to be successful in stimulating the changes in behavior necessary to mitigate environmental degradation, will need to incorporate more than just science.

Our indictment of environmental education really evolved into an indictment of education overall. I think that to understand why we need to conserve and protect nature, we need to know something of aesthetics, we need an understanding of philosophy. Art and literature, for example, can help us to see inherent beauty and understand poetry in our surroundings – which may be somewhat lacking from the current educational process.

I think these things will help us understand what we need to live good lives, something that perhaps education in general is overlooking.

We don’t intend to say that individual educators have failed. I have the utmost respect for teachers. I think it’s the hardest job imaginable. Good teachers are dedicated, remarkable people. In many cases they work against horrific odds within systems that try to beat the life out of them – and somehow they are resilient.

The good part of where we are is because these people, against really insurmountable odds, have done quite a lot. We hope the book is a jumping off point for people in the trenches.

 

You have said that it’s important for students to understand the concept of a “tipping point.” Why is that so?

Tipping points are important because they’re an illustration of non-linearity. They help us understand that things may progress in ways that are not predictable.

If we heat water, for example, nothing in the linear temperature increase between 1 degree centigrade and 100 degrees centigrade will predict the phase shift that occurs when water boils at 100 degrees.

This can happen with complex things like climate change, in the sense that what we are currently observing may not take into account drastic and unpredictable changes that may occur as a result of anthropogenic or other influences. I think that ignoring this non-linearity is the basis of what fuels the whole climate-deniers camp.

Another important aspect of tipping points is that they can also exist in a social sense. Examples might be the civil rights movement or the current Arab Spring, or the overthrow of Apartheid in South Africa. Students need to know about these things because tipping points can be used to invoke change. They can also cause catastrophic effects if we ignore their non-linear potential.

 

How close are we to a tipping point regarding the environment – or have we passed one?

It depends on who you listen to. I think that we are dangerously close to putting so much momentum into environmental degradation that we’re unable to correct or mitigate it. I think we have the opportunity to stave off suffering if we choose to take it.

If you look at climate science, there is talk about 2025 as a turning point, that things will start to accelerate significantly. The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] talks about 2050 being really critical.

It’s imminent, but the problem in knowing where the tipping points are for certain is that we can only quantify that in retrospect. In my opinion, it would behoove us to be conservative in our actions and, in the face of uncertainty, curtail our actions until we know more.

 

You have expressed concern that our investment in environmental education has not yielded a return because students don’t see the connections between their behavior and environmental problems. What are the signs of this disconnection?

A lot of the work that I’ve done has been with schools in California. Some private schools outside of the public system have quite aggressive environmental education programs. We had a mentorship program at one that worked on building scientific skills based on the marine research that we do at the Ocean Conservation Society and at the same time teaching students how to identify a problem and then make a measurable impact on that problem. But I didn’t find that the highly aware communities in these private schools were particularly prone to action, and that’s where I started to question the concept that awareness will lead to action.

The traditional approach to environmental to environmental education, to raise awareness with the idea that it will create its own road. I don’t think that works, and I don’t think we have the time to wait.

If you look at current polls – which may not reflect K-12, because they are not voters – you see that we’re losing ground regarding addressing environmental issues. Environmental educators, and all of us in the environmental community need to ask ourselves, “Why is this so?”

 

What kinds of activities have been successful in helping students make these connections?

Contact with nature always helps, though it can be difficult to effect in large urban school districts.

Place-based education has shown some promise in helping people connect, focusing on local ecology and restoration. School gardening shows tremendous potential on a lot of levels, because it connects students to where their food comes from and they learn by experience what it takes to grow food. It can also move to community involvement programs, like “Food from the Hood,” which was something we had in Los Angeles a long time ago. Some of the food grown by students was used in the school cafeteria and some was distributed to needy people in the local communities.

Learning how government works is also important. Teaching civics can help students understand that they can become involved in the political process and that’s a good thing for our democracy.

We need to encourage students to ask themselves what kind of a world they want to live in. Schools need to teach students that they do hold the power – and they need to choose to exercise that power, political power.

 

You’ve argued that we need to teach students a “world view” – why?

We’re all responsible for protecting the ecosystems that sustain us. That is the case whether we choose to accept it or not. If we breathe, if consume anything, then we should understand the limits of that consumption.

The world that we live in is ever-shifting towards a global economy, a global state of consciousness. If we hope to turn that into a global community where collective resource problems are shared and addressed and perhaps solved, then we will need to see ourselves as citizens of Earth. 

 

At present, economic recovery is the main social priority. How do we make the case for environmental education?

I think that education can be instrumental in helping us to see there is more to living a good life than money alone. This goes back to what I talked about earlier in terms of the study of aesthetics or a study of literature or a study of history, topics that can give us a broader perspective on our lives.

Environmental education, as we set forth in the book, can give us the tools to do that. It’s important, especially in the divisive times in which we live, to approach people on a point that is relevant to their lives.

It will be different from place to place. It will be different in rural communities. It will be different in New York that it will in Arizona. It will be different in South Dakota than it will in Los Angeles. The environmental education community needs to be sensitive to the importance of finding common ground, some way to get around the politicization of environmental issues.

National security is a good example. Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn did a study on the effects of environmental degradation on national security; the effects are dire. We talk about sea level rise, for example, and the fact that sea level rise is directly tied to climate change – but it’s likely that it’s not going to be sea level rise that gets us. The destabilization of our world and the increase in military spending in military commitment that we’re going to need as resources become scarce are more likely to affect us in the short term than sea level rise will.

 

California has generally led the nation when it comes to environmental protection. Is it important for it to be a leader in environmental education? 

I think so. The Education and the Environment Initiative is an example of a really good first step and I think that’s something we should all be proud of.

With that said, we need to continue to push ourselves past our collective comfort zone until we see measurable impact. I think that California is poised to lead the country in showing what works and what doesn’t, which will also necessitate appropriate evaluation techniques and that we be fluid and flexible in our evaluation of the programs that we undertake.

We need all the help that we can get. Environmental degradation is a huge collective issue that affects all of us and the more active that an individual state or an individual municipality is, the better off we will all be as a global community.

It will take grassroots efforts on the part of educators and administrators and parents and students to hold our politicians to task. I hope that happens.

 

Thank you.