4 THEORIZING

Metaphor 1: Knowledge Grows Like Building a House

The house-building metaphor might be the most prevalent way that knowledge is understood within public education in North America. As with any building project, blueprints, guides, and official plans provide a clear sense of the final goal and the pieces needed to “construct” a knowledgeable person. A group of people are involved in interpreting those blueprints, and some are better at it than others, better at making the imagined appear in actuality. In this situation, that group includes teachers, parents/caregivers, and administrators. The visionary/architect behind all this might include educational theorists, historical practices, and maybe even the culture. Another component of the building metaphor is that things are added in a particular order. The shingles can’t go on without a roof; the floor joists need a foundation.

Metaphors having to do with buildings and their construction are a common part of educational language. Teachers talk about “laying a good foundation” and “foundational skills,” “scaffolding” the learner, “constructing” lessons, and even, sometimes, thinking outside “the frame.” The process of building is pretty generalizable, sometimes incredibly so. Consider some of the recent suburbs appearing around big cities: the foundations always look the same, and every house needs a garage. As educators, we get a plan, something generally applicable, and we have the sense that knowledge is built up through individual fragments—like LEGO blocks—which when assembled correctly bring us to the desired outcome.

The builder makes decisions about what, when, and where with regard to the growing house. Foundational knowledge, once laid properly, supports further knowledge, eventually leading to a complete structure: a knowing adult, an engaged citizen, even. This process also implies that some fragments are basically useless until their time comes. No point offering up the chimney cap before the fireplace exists. In fact, the whole structure has the potential to collapse if not assembled thoughtfully and in the right order. This particular conception of knowledge, then, puts a lot of pressure on and power with the teachers/builders. Before the constructing process begins, a student’s knowledge is just a hole in the ground and an empty lot. This metaphor can be expanded, of course, to add the natural world and the student themselves into the role of builders. Some might imagine this to be more like constructing a neighborhood, but it’s still a building metaphor. Its key points are (1) the fragmented and ordered nature of knowledge; (2) the pretty generalizable route to being knowledgeable; (3) the individual nature of the result; (4) the progression from less, empty, simple, incomplete to more, full, complex, finished; and (5) the role of teacher as builder and interpreter of blueprints.

Metaphor 2: Knowledge Grows Like Traversing a Spiderweb

On a bright spring day, graduate students in education gather on the lush, well-cared-for grass of a local urban park. Into the middle of the circle, the professor introduces a single wool sock. It is a fairly indistinct example of the sock species, except that it is exceptionally dirty. Its filth is the result of a mountain wander in receding snows. The professor’s request regarding this soiled relic of high meanderings is that these teacher-learners partner and discuss the creation of lesson plans around the sock itself.

At first, the uptake is slow. The high school math and history teachers appear completely stumped, whereas the grade 4 teachers discuss how literacy requirements could be met through writing stories from the perspective of the sock and producing various poems about it. “Ode to the Filthy Sock” is sure to draw interest from the average nine-year-old.

Then, suddenly, inspiration strikes, and the history teachers begin seeing connections. What is the sock made of? What is the history of wool in the world? What role have sheep played in economic, environmental, and colonial realities across the globe? Soon they are on to issues of global trade, of migration, of invasive species, and of domestication. But what of the math teacher? Drawn in by the weft and warp of the sock, she explores questions of threads per square inch, of the mathematics of the weave itself. Because of its crusted mud, the sock holds its shape, and she recognizes the entrée into mapping, geometry, and even calculus. In fact, soon teachers are seeing connections between the sock and the entire content of their subjects and grades across the year. One educator comments: “I am amazed at how interconnected everything is.”

The preceding is an example of the knowledge-as-spiderweb metaphor in action. Here knowledge has an interconnected nature such that one can travel from one place on the web to another via multiple routes. The classic spiderweb radiates threads out and away from a central point. But what is positioned at the center? Theories of knowledge tend to posit two answers to this question. The first, like the preceding tale, positions an object or an event in the center. For example, teachers in programs such as Expeditionary Learning will posit something like “ancient China” as the starting place and then build a monthlong integrated unit, touching into all subjects and required learning outcomes.² This webby theory of knowledge allows more space for spontaneous and unexpected occurrences. The diverse pathways of learning allow for different encounters along the way. Likewise, when taking a trip from Seattle to Toronto, the sites and sights will vary depending on the route taken. In some situations, the teacher becomes a facilitator and responder to the journey rather than the guide for it. This role calls for more trust in one’s ability to find connections, ask good questions, and provide the rich, sometimes dirty, impetus.

The web’s center can also be the student themselves. This positioning suggests that the student has myriad directions they might go and that knowledge is something the learner is immersed in. Knowledge is understood as being all-available, and exploring the knowledge web doesn’t require a singular path, as is implied in the house metaphor. The paths through it are infinite, but choices must be made—one cannot necessarily jump from one part of the web to another. As such, the conception of knowledge as a web fosters a sense of learning as gathering, exploring, flexible, and growing. In this style of education, we can hear echoes of child-centered pedagogy with the teacher along for the ride, offering mediations and interventions when the learner finds themselves hanging upside down on the web of knowledge or tangled up and glued to a single strand.

Metaphor 3: Knowledge Grows Like Rhizomes

On a late fall day on Canada’s West Coast, the graduate class wanders along the bank of a small stream. On this sound walk, the students are focused on listening. Recent rains have raised the water level, and initially most of the walkers sense just a singular roaring sound. However, as the class wends its way along and the teacher draws attention to careful listening, all begin to notice subtle differences. Sound rises and falls, wave-like, as they move closer and farther away. The underlying burbles and murmurs become more distinct and recognizable. The banks, log jams, and stones themselves shape, reflect, and influence the tenor and robustness of the sound. After about twenty minutes of this silent parade, the group gathers to reflect and respond to the experience.

Voices emerge slowly out of the shared sanctity of human silence. Some noticed the scratchings and twitterings of the variegated Thrushes gathering for the long flight south. Some wondered at the bass tones of big trucks passing on the highway below. Several noticed a plane passing high above. Still others noted the subtle changes of their own passing footsteps over the terrain. Many are struck by how much they didn’t hear outside their own focus on the liquid symphony.

Each thread of discovery leads in a multiplicity of directions, which begin to emerge as the teacher searches for implications beyond the registered sounds. Some voices head in the direction of noise pollution, and a debate commences about felt differences between the natural and not-so-natural. Other voices are intrigued by the musicality of it all: where music comes from, what defines it, and whether some of these sounds could be produced on a sampler, a pulsing loop for a watery hip-hop. Still others begin to gather ideas around the physics of sound and the dynamics of water; some testing of theories ensues. One voice quietly suggests something important about the inner sounds, the times we lose connection to hearing the outside because we are contemplating something else. This strand leads to further discussions about attention, anxiety, and the challenges of being present.

Finally, a last voice wonders aloud how rocks, plants, stones, and birds feel about all this noise. Are some noises good and some painful? How does each individual find their own preferred situation in this soundscape? Eventually American Dipper pops into view at the edge of the wild water, drawing attention back to the musicality of stream and place. We move on to a more planned lesson with each student finding a natural noisemaker. Soon the glade is awash with sticks breaking, rocks banging, garbage crinkling, and voices howling. The stream seems to slide, surprisingly quietly, into the background.

This description of a learning experience rests on more recent theoretical work in philosophy and educational theory, work that critiques linearity and the compartmentalizable model of knowledge as well as the vision of the singular detached learner. Here the metaphor, drawn from the work of Deleuze and Guattari,³ is the rhizome—those tiny, threadlike stem structures in some ferns, bamboos, and irises that spread out underground and fill the soils of the planet. In some places, thousands of miles of these beings weave through a cubic meter of dirt. Rhizomes have a remarkable capacity to press into any place and rise up through any crack with near-teleporting agility. A rhizome may follow a particular trajectory for a while but then stop, and suddenly another appears ten feet away, heading in a different direction. Then that one backtracks and joins with another that has been lying dormant for the last year.

The spontaneous, organic, surprising development that is characteristic of the rhizome parallels the diversity of responses from the sound walkers. During the sound walk, the student is immersed in knowledge and can be charging off, popping up, and resting in myriad locations all at the same time. Their sound observations lack an obvious linearity or directedness. This metaphor gains strength when one considers the soil and all its component beings to be knowledge, with the rhizomes as efflorescences of discovery. The teacher becomes, metaphorically, part of the soil, an aspect of the learning that is encountered, helps build richness, and is left behind—all at the same time. Given the more linear and “builderly” kind of training most educators have had, they are often challenged to imagine how this might work in practice. Yet thinking about knowledge in this way might help expand educational practices in important ecologizing ways.

Ultimately, finding metaphors that support one’s theory and experience of knowledge is important. Metaphors can be generative, explanatory, and supportive, but they also shape and direct pedagogical imagination and implementation. Significantly different educational encounters for learners will be created by each of the various approaches to knowledge, that is, whether one is, metaphorically, building a house, traversing a spiderweb, or developing rhizomatically. Unsurprisingly, ecologizing education tends toward more natural metaphors, where knowledge is understood as being relational, diffuse, interconnectable, fluid, and shared. However, in any particular teaching moment, either the seemingly totally spontaneous or the linear blueprint approach could make more sense. Given that public education tends to prioritize a Western orientation to knowledge—fragmented, compartmentalizable, hyper-rational, and scientific—the educators at NEST and Maple Ridge are working at finding ways to reduce the house-building approach and increase the web and the rhizomatic approaches. This idea of expanding the range of knowledges involved in education—shifting across the three metaphors or including nature and its denizens as co-teachers—has implications for practice and the ways educators might close off particular ways of knowing, often accidentally.

Here is a relatively common and seemingly innocuous situation. A six-year-old approaches their human teacher with a complex and intriguing question: “Why is Sky different shades of blue?” or “How come Leaf used to be green and is now mostly red?” or “If Lichen is actually a relationship between two or more beings, how do they come together in the first place?” Drawing from their own knowledge, the teacher responds by talking about the scattering of light rays, something related to sugar levels and how that interacts with various kinds of photosynthesizing cells, or maybe a mumbled comment about bumping into each other on a bare rock face.

These answers aren’t wrong, although they are incomplete. What is important, though, is that each of these responses imposes epistemological assumptions on the questioner. In fact, any answer the teacher gives is necessarily incomplete, since answers to these questions are still growing, changing, and expanding. Yet offering an answer without a caveat—for instance, “there is much more to this, but this is what I know”—can suggest that the response is complete. This then reifies a series of assumptions: Complete answers exist for most—even all—questions somewhere out there. There are experts who know these things. The process of acquiring knowledge is really about asking the right questions—to the right people—and then gathering the responses and building your own warehouse of knowledge. Humans, usually adults, are the sources of this knowledge, along with human tools like books or the internet. There is a potential totality in the process of knowledge-building, so we could eventually know it all. And in this way, we “make progress” and “perfect” our knowledge as we become older. Of course, this is not really how knowledge works in an ecologizing education setting. Thus, the decision to answer the question without acknowledging its incompleteness deceives the questioner as to what knowledge is, where it is found, and how it might be held.

So, then, how do assumptions about knowledge shift with a different kind of answer? Consider these varied responses the teacher might give: “Interesting question—here is what I know about that subject, but it is definitely not the end of the story” or “Interesting question—what do you know about this?” or “Interesting question—let’s get the group together and see what everyone thinks, and maybe then we could ask Google and your parents too” or “Interesting question—let’s keep playing with it, but I think maybe we should ask this Tree, and those Clouds, and spend more time with that Lichen, since they have some important insights.” In short, the particular way a question is answered reveals how the speaker thinks knowledge works, where it is located, and how meaning is made. For ecologizing education, Lichen is a co-teacher, and as such, we might well ask whether Lichen has knowings to offer to our human understanding. In fact, some knowings aren’t possible unless human learner and Lichen are co-present. Lichen might even care how they come to be known—most humans do, after all. Consequently, knowledge-building becomes a much more distributed, shared, and relational endeavor.

By conceptualizing and enacting knowledge in this way, ecologizing education also pushes back on some troublesome tropes explored throughout this book. The first trope is anthropocentrism and the notion that the human teacher is the gatekeeper to or has all the answers. In ecologizing education, we recognize the distribution and diffusion of knowing. We are moving the human from the center, from a position as “the being that knows” to a position as just one of many contributors in the process of coming to know. This not only decenters the human teacher but, interestingly, also undercuts the hierarchy between adult and child, expert and nonexpert. If the human teacher is but one source of knowledge, learners and their peers are also knowers who have something to offer.

A second trope addressed by this epistemological move away from the all-knowing human teacher is the idea of Truth with a capital T and the belief that any person can come to completely know anything. Here, in ecologizing education, knowledge is always incomplete, and even if we were to chase it forever, some things would still escape us, slide through our fingers—which has further varied and deeper implications. First, this image of knowledge escaping suggests that knowledge is no longer in bondage, no longer a possession of the human individual. Second, this incompleteness and slipperiness of knowing allow for the necessary and ongoing attitude of wonder. One can always ask more questions, hear more understandings, do more wonder wandering. And third, in ecologizing education, it is possible for knowledge to belong to a group/community such that each individual only ever holds a part thereof and the learning project expands beyond “I” to “we.”

The third trope that ecologizing educations pushes back against is the prioritizing of a particular form of “reason”—where the subject and object of the “knowing” are detached and are in opposition to one another. This approach to reason and knowledge tends to ignore and even denigrate myriad other forms of knowing. For example, it often sidelines and dismisses Indigenous ways of knowing, where ceremony, the land, the ancestors are all involved;⁴ or the experiential, physical, artistic knowing of craftspersons or labourers or nurturers; or the knowing of Robin when Cooper’s Hawk appears (and all other knowing that exists between, among, and throughout the natural world).

In sum, our conception of knowledge makes a difference, both in what can be learned and in our approach to teaching. Some metaphors of knowledge don’t require humans to be the center, the all-knowing, the sole designer. And those metaphors better map onto our desire to decenter the human and bring the natural world into the educational process. How, then, can teachers evaluate their practices? How might they determine, for example, whether any particular lesson is ecologizing—or not? How might they make the necessary changes? For that, we need a bit of axiological talk.

Idea: The Rebel Teacher

Education is often overlooked, both as practice and as scholarly activity, when academics turn their attention to changing culture. Social theorists, political scientists, philosophers, and historians all advocate for and theorize about change. Yet these theories often gain little traction in the world. Perhaps that is because these theorists have ignored what educators and educational scholars might contribute to the process of cultural change. Indeed, we believe that contributions from the field of education are, in fact, desperately needed in the neoliberal modern West if we are going to survive as a species and maybe even thrive alongside all our twittering, swimming, and photosynthesizing kith and kin.

Shifting a community from its current beliefs, priorities, foundational stories, systems of governance, and ways of interacting to something different is not, of course, a spontaneous event. A culture doesn’t go to bed on Tuesday, read a theory about how to be different—say, more environmentally and socially just—and then wake up changed on Wednesday morning. People, systems, and institutions have deeply embedded habits and structures that resist change. New tools, stories, voices, and ways of being must be heard, crafted and learned, created and taught. Power must shift, values must be reconsidered, and priorities must change. All of this involves education, since people, systems, and institutions have to learn how to be differently. Cultural change is, therefore, at its core, an educational endeavor. But education doesn’t necessarily support change. It can, in fact, in some forms, if not carefully and critically considered, do the exact opposite and maintain the problematic status quo. This means that ecologizing educators are going to have to “get their rebel on.”

In 1957, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his essay The Rebel. In his acceptance speech for the award, he clarified that this work is not “in the service of those who make history” but “at the service of those who suffer it.” He then posited that the nobility of the writer—and we suggest the same for educators—is always rooted in two commitments: one is “the refusal to lie about what one knows” and the other is “the resistance to oppression.”⁶ Thus, we see ecologizing educators as acting in service of those suffering because of modernity. They bear witness to the current environmental and social challenges while naming the lie(s) that modern Western culture tells about the environment. We see this role as resisting oppression while supporting those, human and beyond, who are suffering it. Let’s look more closely at the ideas explored in The Rebel and how the rebel educator can play an important role in establishing an ecologizing ethic that will move the culture toward justice.

In The Rebel, Camus questions the orchestrators and theorizers of revolutions, suggesting that they often miss some integral pieces that must be present if change is to actually happen. For Camus, revolutions tend to start well because people recognize a clear and immediate challenge and rally together to respond to, say, a set of ecological challenges and social injustices. They have an idea, an image, of a potential future, one that is better in myriad ways.

The trouble, Camus explains, happens in between the overcoming of the immediate problem and the arriving at the posited goal. The process for change often fails to account for the effort and incentives that are needed in order for real people who are immersed in a real culture surrounded by real institutions and real structures to move to a significantly different place. The new place is just an idea, after all, evident only in scholarly books or issuing from the frothing lips of a revolutionary. Only after the revolt has begun, Camus says, do the revolutionaries begin to cast around for tools, systems, and ways of being that might help them become these different people in a potentially better culture. But often they come up empty. They fall back on using the tools of the culture they are familiar with and immersed in. As a result, they end up recapitulating and returning to the status quo.

The problem Camus identifies is essentially a gap in education. Real cultural change requires us to understand the world differently, positioning care and placing significance in new ways. But this is not a simple, straightforward process. We see the idea, the image of the future, and we take a step toward it. With each move, evaluation occurs. We compare the aim with the results thus far and then take the next step as needed. These are slow, careful, albeit uncertain, steps along a meandering path in a very long journey. This messy work cannot be circumvented if we are to find success in our project of moving from an unjust environmentally destructive anthropocentric way of being toward something better. Happily, though, each step offers a new view, allows us to live differently, tosses up new challenges, and adds solidity to the aim. Each step is a learning process that involves, by definition, education. Thus, this project of cultural change must involve thoughtful educators who accompany learners through all the steps. By extension, educators also accompany the culture at large through the dynamic twists and turns of cultural change. We must acknowledge, though, that this puts an immense responsibility onto the shoulders of educators and educational theorists. Hence, the rebel teacher.

Camus was interested not only in rebellion but also in the rebels themselves—people with a sense of the vision and larger goal, who are anchored in the reality of the here and now and are willing to name some of the problems; to resist the structures, ideas, and languages that further the problem; and to support the oppressed. This is our rebel teacher: the educator who is ecologizing their practices, engaging with the voices of their places and communities (including the marginalized humans and the natural world), advocating for a more eco-socially just world, resisting problematic cultural norms, and feeling energized about the rich possibilities for change.

Being a rebel may excite some educators and concern others—and rightly so. Change of the kind we are interested in with this ecologizing education project is a challenge that is complex, layered, and ongoing. Our rebel teacher will have to be up to such a challenge. Next, we briefly offer what we believe are three traits of the rebel ecologizing educator.

Courageous: This first trait relates to bearing witness to the problem—that the natural world, our kith and kin, is in trouble—and courageously speaking the simple truth of this, both out loud and, when necessary, to power.

Persevering: The second trait involves developing the ability to lean in and do the difficult work even when the project seems hopeless. These efforts might include giving care and solace to those immediately present while also seeking to contain and limit the expansion of said problem. They might also include creating an infrastructure of allies bringing their own gifts and abilities to bear on the work. In Camus’s novel The Plague, which was written in parallel to The Rebel, many of those allies were drawn from the ranks of the ignored, isolated, and marginalized, those who understood the problems, experienced the suffering, and were willing to do the work of change.

Committed: The final trait of the rebel ecologizing educator brings us back, full circle, to Camus’s ideas around commitment. Medical doctors take the Hippocratic oath, which is quite a clear values statement that serves as a framework and impetus for response and behavior in light of illness and working with the sick. A pledge of sorts might apply to ecologizing educators too.

Key to the Hippocratic oath is the end point: that of health/well-being, even flourishing, and the mitigation of pain. Let’s turn now to the similar end point/aim we have proposed for the rebel teacher and our ecologizing education project: mutually beneficial flourishing.

Aim: Mutually Beneficial Flourishing

We have proposed that the rebel teacher’s aim, distant though it might be, is to teach toward mutually beneficial flourishing. It is important to note that this goal extends beyond the meager and odd concept of sustainability—what is it we are trying to sustain, anyway?—toward the more inclusive, more ecologically and socially just idea of flourishing.

The language of flourishing is drawn from eco-philosophy, particularly deep ecology and eco-feminism. Eco-philosophy posits that all beings across the globe have agency and inherent value and therefore have a right to enact, in their own ways, what they desire to become. All beings—Bear, Flea, Anton, Spruce—should have the opportunity to become their best selves, without being limited by the needs of a privileged few.

Consider, for example, lone Black Spruce stuck in a concrete planter on a busy Vancouver intersection. On whose terms does this tree exist? After all, Spruce is a community-based plant, and this one has been transported thousands of miles from its home in Canada’s north—the land that shaped, supported, and knows Spruce. What happens to flourishing when humans are making the choices? Or when one is compelled to serve another’s purposes? The concept of flourishing nudges us to answer questions—whose choice? whose purpose? and on whose terms?—and compels us to somehow involve the individual in question. What did Black Spruce want in all this? What would Black Spruce like to become, and what are the elements that best make this possible?

Despite what some humans believe, the freedom to flourish is not simply about individuals doing whatever they want. Along with freedom comes a responsibility to one’s community to not destroy or revoke the freedom of others. The freedom to flourish, then, includes restraints—not taking too much, not impinging on the rights and freedoms of others, and doing least harm. In fact, freedom in this sense mirrors quite powerfully the way a rich, robust, diverse, and functioning ecosystem works. Everything in the system is of worth because all have a necessary role to play if the entire system is to function at its best. The worms and fungi are just as important as the plants and birds. The contributions of the apex carnivores are no more important or significant than those of that same carnivore’s gut flora or the sun-eating capacities of Strawberry, Licorice Fern, and Dandelion. Outbreaks of disease, mass die-offs, and the predominance of any particular species are indicators that the dynamic equilibrium of the healthy ecosystem has been compromised.

COVID-19 is one of those indicators, a deadly example of an unbalanced system. As a species, we can respond to the massive threat of this new virus, but we should also respond to the imbalance that made COVID-19 and its spread so possible. In today’s Anthropocene, the species most responsible for throwing off that balance—by undermining the freedoms of others and by failing to live up to its ecological responsibilities—is the modern, industrialized, rapacious, imperialistic human.

We have added a modifying phrase—mutually beneficial—to our aim as a reminder that our own individual flourishing is not the goal. The natural world exists and needs to be heard and considered. Individual flourishing must be seen within a larger context, community, and culture. Thus, flourishing is also about limiting oneself, mitigating one’s own freedom, recognizing the importance of balance and diversity for healthy ecosystems, and acknowledging the significant roles other beings play in our own well-being. Mutually beneficial flourishing involves recognizing the ties that bind one’s flourishing to that of others. I cannot be fully human (or even fully myself) unless all humans are also afforded that possibility, and the same proves true for all-our-relations. Just as the most diverse, successful, resilient, and richest ecosystems honor and involve all their members, big or small, so it is with the well-being of humans and human communities: our fullest range of possibilities and becomings is tied to the world despite our efforts to convince ourselves otherwise. We will rise only on a shared tide.

Becoming Embodied

It’s early September, and you have just returned to Boston after a summer in the backcountry. “Reentry” is always challenging. Strangely, though, this time the first assault comes from an unexpected quarter. As you turn your bike onto the quiet path along River, you are overwhelmed by the stench. The smell of garbage and sewage, exhaust fumes, and overly coiffed humans is overpowering. Tiny tears leak from your eyes, as if you have just cut into an onion. You cannot believe that people tolerate this revolting odor. Yet there they are—exercising, chasing puppies and children, and having lazy picnics along River, all under this repulsive fragrance.

After four months on trail, your sense of smell has been recalibrated to appreciate a world of subtlety and nuance, recognizing the flavor of incoming rain on the wind, the sweet crackle of pine resin, or the deep musk of Woodland Caribou. In a world where scents are subtle, you’ve expanded your olfactory range and improved your sensory potential.

Here, next to the assaulting miasma of urban stink on this first day back in the city, your nose, brain, and body can’t handle the incoming load. You are forced to restrict, limit, numb, dampen, detach from sensitivities to survive without being permanently nauseous. And, yes, your body does begin to adjust, adapting to a situation you cannot change. You start to “not smell” that which you know exists. And so, five days later, you ride next to the river without even a hint of the malodorous. You know the stench has not disappeared—no miracle cleanup has occurred. You also know and regret that you have been forced to separate yourself from the larger, natural world around you, to desensitize in order to survive this built-over space.

One might reasonably ask how the dulling of senses fits into a discussion about how to be human in the world. The response is twofold. First, the loss of one’s sense of smell works as a parallel to how our sense of being part of the world, our relationality, is shut down. Clearly, part of the shutting down is about protecting oneself from being overwhelmed physically, but there is a psychological side to this as well: the smell and what it indicates (in this case, human waste production and lack of care) come to be not known, not smelled. The expression “out of sight, out of mind” applies to other senses too and demonstrates the clear connection between what is sensed and what is thought about. No bad smell, no thinking about the human role in its creation, and, therefore, no need to respond.

Second, our senses are gifts the world has given us. Our senses provide the means for us to gather information, to learn, and to “make sense of” the world and our position in it. Our senses provide pathways into beauty and meaning. Having evolved over generations, these tools assist in our becoming human. To not use them, to not embody ourselves in the world, is to reject the offerings of the earth and our ancestors, whose experiences and encounters with the more-than-human shaped them. It means potentially reducing our range of possibilities for enacting our humanness. Full uptake of our senses is a way to honor those gifts, exercise our skills, encounter nuance, and situate ourselves in the world while not solely relying on the culture to frame how to be human in this world.

To smell rain or garbage is to be embodied in place and usually requires a response: take shelter or stop fouling. To really hear the symphony of spring birds, see the loss of insects and the disappearance of their companion flowers, and taste the pesticide on the air is to acknowledge our kinship, our relations, to feel our way back home. But experiencing the world like this also means recognizing a different way of being human. Perspectives, worldviews, experiences, and responsibilities change if we sense ourselves as being part of a larger gathering or even understand ourselves to be incomplete without our sensory range. Those who choose not see, hear, or smell the world and the suffering within it occupy, in fact, a privileged position—one absent of sense.

The senses have long been a key pedagogical entry point into building relationship with the natural world. Encountering and then admiring the artistic palette of riotous color, listening to the orchestral workings of natural beings, and immersing one’s fingers in fecund soil all tend to deepen connection with and care for one’s neighbors and relations. For the ecologizing educator, developing a sense of care for the world involves building relationship, which requires encountering, coming to know, overcoming ignorance. Regrettably, many of us live in places that never give our senses a chance.

Outdoor educators have noted that many humans hardly notice the natural world around them. Children can recognize hundreds of corporate brands (think the golden arches or the swoop) while struggling to identify five local bird species. Adults know the names of Pine, Oak, and Tulip from reading without being able to recognize an individual from those species. Since the Enlightenment, the philosopher Michel Serres⁷ notes, the modern West has been taught that we humans are independent from the world around us. Even as that belief has become increasingly unsustainable, particular political and economic forces seek to ignore or minimize our interconnections to the places we live. They strive to have us not see, not smell, not feel our world. And, frankly, we think that stinks!

Environmental education has long focused on what each of us can do to respond to the myriad ecological crises we face. We are encouraged to build our own relationships with our local places and work toward reducing, reusing, recycling. Responding to our environmental challenges has been framed as a process of taking individual responsibility, working at the local level, and changing one’s behavior such that each of us does their share and the planet benefits. While none of this is problematic in itself, this approach inevitably fails, crucially because it ignores the systemic problem—the politics and privileges of furthering human alienation.

Ecologizing educators acknowledge the slowness of change and the politics of privilege and conclude that the challenge cannot be addressed solely at the individual level. In fact, downloading community and cultural problems onto individuals has long been a tool of the colonial mindset. If the project is one of cultural change and not simply individual change, we need to ecologize at the ontological level. This is a question of challenging what it means to be human in the world. As such, a key concern is to undo the Enlightenment notion of the modern human as separate, in mind and body, from—and better than—the rest of the world.

Undoing Alienation

What does it mean to be human? How does the human being exist in the world? Two significantly different positions exist for these ontological questions: one proposes that the human is a separate, independent being, while the other contends that the human is a relational, dialogical being. As we have already noted previously, the positioning of the human as a being separate from the natural world has been taught in Western culture for centuries. As it has been lived out in the modern West (through, for instance, colonization, overuse of resources, extractive forms of knowledge creation, absence of rights and voice for all-our-relations), this philosophical stance not only has contributed significantly to the various environmental crises we now face but also is woefully inadequate to address, forestall, or remedy those crises.

Ecologizing education adopts the other position—that humans are relational, dialogical beings—and seeks to undo the alienation that underpins the dominant culture in the West. Fundamental to this “undoing” project and informed by how pedagogy plays out in practice is the belief that the learner is not simply an individual being bounded by skin (or a brain bounded by skull) but that consideration must also be given to their communities, their stories and histories, the classroom ecosystem, their bodies, and the bodies that surround and interact with them. And if we listen to and learn from our more-than-human relations (as ecologizing education seeks to do), we might discover that even at the level of the human body (bounded by skin) we are not individuals. Let’s consider, for a moment, Lichen.

For the mycologist Merlin Sheldrake, the lichen is far more complex than the easy formula—one Fungi and one Algae coming together—that many of us learned in high school biology.⁸ Lichen is an amalgam of different beings—yes, Fungi and Algae, but also Bacterium and other microorganisms. Its symbiotic relationships are not fixed, as partners come and go. This is a community, a symbiosis, and a functioning democracy. In describing Lichen, Sheldrake—recognizing the limits of the English language and its underlying ontological assumptions about individuality—suggests that Lichen is like a living orchestration, a poly-vocal song, with parts being carried by the various members. There are no solo performances, no independent cello or quiet alto. Lichen only works as ensemble, just as the organs of the human body or a group of learners only work as a togetherness.

To be clear, Sheldrake is not suggesting a magical all-is-good-all-the-time gathering. In his description of Lichen, he invokes the family, something that exists as a coming together but can be anything from wonderful to toxic, depending on balance. No doubt, Lichen has much to teach us about ourselves and the unseen, often unacknowledged, connections we have to the world around—and within—us.

For ecologizing education, the ontological point is not to find ways to completely undo the individual human, placing us in a soup of total oneness. Rather, ecologizing education tries to overcome this positioning of human as completely separate from, solely individual, and better than and to move instead toward recognizing the “both/and” nature of our being in the world, recognizing humans as fluid individuals and dynamic communities.

Undoing the Nature/Culture Divide

In many critical fields (gender, race, sexuality, ability), simple binaries such as man/woman, civilized/primitive, culture/nature, being/nonbeing, able/disabled are considered problematic for several reasons. First, such binaries ignore the wondrous range that exists between, around, and beyond each of these two imagined poles. In doing so, they force beings—and this is often detrimental to those beings—into one of two fairly restrictive positions. Second, these simple binaries lead to hierarchies and dangerous assumptions about which is “better than”—which then leads to privileging one side of the binary and to justifications not only for the marginalization and silencing of the other but also for violence toward it. For these reasons, environmental theorists and educators have pushed back on the hierarchical binary of culture versus nature, which places humans at the top of the pile called “all living things.” Claims that “we are all nature” and writings stressing entanglements of “natureculture” abound.⁹ This idea isn’t wrong per se, but we think it’s worth exercising some caution before we celebrate too much the return of humans to the natural fold.

First, we believe it is important to recognize the distinction between theory and practice, between the “idea” and the way things are actually enacted. Claiming that there is no nature/culture divide does not change the fact that, in practice, all of us continue to operate in a world where there explicitly is. In the classroom, human students are still prioritized over all others. Metaphors and language still paint the other as “lesser than.” For example, lessons might impart the belief that humans are more advanced rationally and linguistically. Time spent outside might include the experience of trees being pushed over in search of salamanders, worms being crushed in loving hands after being pulled from their homes, or birds being stressed away from their nests for the sake of a math lesson under a tree. We still live in a cultural milieu that gains umpteen privileges from the unpaid and unrecognized labor of other beings—clean air and water, dairy, meat, vegetables—and we blithely assume that this is our right. Saying “there is no difference between humans and nature” is easy, but if we don’t do the hard work to actualize that reality, the phrase is merely the vacuous claim of the privileged.

This ontological shift—from humans as separate and better to “we are all nature”—parallels similar efforts in other critical discourses. Some gender theorists (usually cisgendered males) or race theorists (usually white) have made claims of a gender-free or colorblind world. The response from feminist and critical race scholars is that they still live in a world where they are unheard, ignored, and subjected to unwanted advances and myriad violences. At best, the theory is a postulated goal; it is certainly not a reality. Furthermore, it is not up to the oppressor classes to make this determination. We suggest that the same problem exists in the nature/culture binary. Ultimately, it is not the prerogative of the self-proclaimed “top” of the binary hierarchy, whether it be male, white, hetero, or human, to declare that the binary has been overcome and is no longer applicable. One wonders what Orca, Salmon, and Cedar have to say on the matter.

We would also do well to reflect on the political implications and potential manipulations of a statement such as “we are all nature.” Some might want to interpret that statement in this way: if humans are synonymous with nature, then all the products and results of human action are “natural.” We can see that such a position makes judging actions almost impossible. Dolphins drowning in seining nets are simply part of how nature works. Marshes being filled in for high-rise developments is the natural way of the world. Interpreted in this way, “we are all nature” does nothing for the cause of ecojustice.

Ultimately, the aim of “bringing humans back to nature,” or flattening the ontological hierarchy, is worth striving toward. This cannot be done, however, through the stroke of a pen or by theoretical intention alone, no matter how true the statement “humans are nature too” might be. Active work, educational energy, and political struggle are required to change what it means to be a modern human in the world. In particular, work against this nature/culture binary will need to involve, even foreground, those who are not “privileged,” whose voices are too often not heard.

A Question of Bullying

On a blustery, sunny day, kindergarten and grade 1 children are spread out, playing individually and in small groups along the oceanfront. The tide is low, and the wind whips up small waves. Above, Gull circles, waiting for tasty bits to fall out of people’s lunches. The students tend to be drawn to things much smaller than sky and sea.

Several have set up stores using stones and driftwood and are now “selling” stones and other paraphernalia to their friends. In this caring space and due to an incredible abundance, no one goes without, and no sale is ever rejected. Something deeply social seems to exist within this economy, since sellers are willing to accept almost anything in exchange. One child simply picks up another rock from the ground in front of the store, and the deal is quickly closed. Neither hoarding nor profit motive is seen. A curious onlooker might wonder how long it will take before those environmentally problematic norms take hold.

Other children are busy exploring the tidal area. One group is currently absorbed in watching the sand above a known Clam bed, enjoying the surprising squirts of water and wondering about how deep into the sand these bivalves are.

In the distance, at the edge of the tidal area and the small grassy sward next to the sidewalk, Sunil has found a very active ant colony.¹⁵ A budding entomologist, Sunil is extraordinarily patient, and he has settled in to watch the activity. Another boy, slightly older and substantially bigger, introduces himself into this scene. Billy has been having a bit of trouble connecting with the other students lately. He tends to whirl around the outdoor spaces, entering and exiting the play of others. He is a loud, happy, extroverted type—in marked contrast to Sunil. Billy also tends to seek attention, to want to be noticed, to be the center of the action. With this in mind, one of the human teachers notices as Billy enters Sunil’s world and shortly thereafter begins to step on Ants as they move between their burrow and a piece of apple Sunil had placed nearby. In response to this, Sunil becomes quickly agitated, trying to push Billy away to protect the many more Ants who are now being drawn to the scene of the crushings, since Ants tend to defend their own. The teacher quickly approaches and … does what?

Take a moment to think through this relatively common scenario. What would you do in this situation? What is a thoughtful, meaningful, but ecologizing way to engage and deal with this? There is clearly an aggressor. Do you remove Billy, as you would a bully, in order to protect Sunil? Do you pull the two of them together into a conversation about feelings, about space, about caring for each other, and about right actions? Would an apology be the goal? Who needs to be apologized to? How do the Ants figure into all of this? Are they collateral damage to a human learning moment, or might their deaths be given more significance? Also, what is happening here for Sunil, and what is up with Billy’s behavior? How do we deal with violence in our ecologizing classrooms when it also involves natural kin?

Dealing with the questions and challenges of violence and troubling inter-student relations are part of every classroom, but in ecologizing settings, classic “disciplinary” responses might not work. In this situation, the killing of Ant struck Sunil so deeply, he was willing to fight for them, taking action that was clearly out of character for him. A human teacher might have had a similar response as a result of Billy’s actions, but they also might be immersed in a cultural reality where Ant is seen as lesser beings, even a resource.

In this actual case, the teacher chose to bring the human participants together, a short distance from the still-disturbed and quite panicked anthill. This step allowed a distraught Sunil to settle down a bit before the facilitated discussion began: What happened? Why? How did it make you feel? Billy, are you hearing what Sunil is saying? Eventually Billy was able to apologize, and some sense of closure ensued between humans. But here the human teacher, at Sunil’s insistence, returned to the potentially more aggrieved members of this encounter—the ant colony. After the teacher framed the project as a kind of offering of apology and restitution, it was decided that together Billy and Sunil would build a kind of protective wall around the anthill, make a sign warning other humans of its presence, and offer some crumbled food from their lunches (just a bit because they didn’t want Ant to become dependent on this surprise food source). The result was an extended and potentially rich play encounter between Sunil and Billy and a rather elaborate compound, including play and workout structures, for Ant. We offer this story not as an example of the perfect response to this situation but to explore how changing commitments—to each other and to the more-than-humans around us—brings about changes in priorities and, thus, in the responses of the players.

After all, if we want to move kith and kin into roles of significance, then our responses need to reflect that. Walking away from dead ants risks reenforcing cultural norms of their insignificance. Another component that might have been ignored in this scenario is how all of this lands psychologically for Sunil. What happens when something one cares about, even if others don’t, is wantonly destroyed? For many students in the schools we have worked with, for many of our adult researchers and educators, and for many more people than are willing to admit it, their connection to the natural world goes beyond a utilitarian admiration of beauty. Sunil suffered alongside the crushed and panicking ants, and that psychic pain is often unseen and, consequently, repressed.

But the story doesn’t end here. Episodes similar to both the previous and the upcoming Sunil/Billy story have happened multiple times during our research, in various settings. In fact, when presenting our findings at various academic and practitioner conferences, we have heard many audience members offer similar stories. Clearly, the pain runs deep. This makes these encounters important to consider in the work of ecologizing education, and as we’ll see, they lead us more directly into the psyche of an unecological culture.

Consider the story of Sunil again, but from another angle. At the edge of a grassy sward next to the sidewalk, Sunil, a cisgendered male—for that is how he currently identifies—has found a very active ant colony. His curiosity piqued, this bug lover and slightly eccentric character settles in to watch the goings-on. Over the next ten minutes, he notes the regular travel routes, follows a single ant to the edge of its range, and places a small slice of Apple within reach in order to determine how long it takes for the morsel to be discovered and the message of “food” relayed to all and sundry. Ant begins to carve small chunks off the apple piece. Sunil can contain his excitement no longer and calls loudly to a cisgendered female researcher who is watching Clam spit water into the air nearby.

For more than a year, Zinta has been with this class for at least one day a week. She has a great relationship with everyone. She is also well known for her rich knowledge of all things natural-worldly, for her deep curiosity, and for her profound care for the more-than-human. She is an ideal partner for Sunil’s interests, and the two of them settle in to watch, ponder, and discuss. The questions are rich, and the hypotheses are eclectic. Meanwhile, more ants are arriving at Apple.

It is into this tableau that cisgendered male Billy—who might be thought of as a boyish boy—introduces himself. As mentioned, he is a rambunctious and active kid, outgoing and gregarious, who likes the crashes and bangs of media and childhood more than the quiet contemplative elements. He has also of late been having trouble catching on with a particular group of friends. This difficulty does not arise out of malice—although he has begun to experiment with power through physicality and size—but because he has an elevated level of enthusiasm and a need for dominance. Other children find it challenging to play with Billy for long.

From a distance, Billy spies Sunil and Zinta absorbed in Ant. He approaches slowly, mulling over an idea. Then he inserts himself by carefully stepping on the ants one by one, assertively crushing them. This agitates Sunil more and more with each killing such that he, quite angry and flustered at this point, begins to push the much larger Billy away. Zinta, upset by all of this, moves to intervene and begins to start some of the restorative work already described.

There is yet another aspect of this situation that is important and troubling. With each Ant killed, Billy does not look at Sunil or Ant, other than to locate the next victim. In fact, it would appear that Sunil and the Ants—and their feelings—are completely unimportant to Billy. His focus is on Zinta. It seems that Billy is trying to gauge, understand, confirm a hypothesis about how his killing actions affect Zinta. Perhaps he is looking to determine the range of his power over this adult woman.

A myriad of complex, important, and disturbing issues are evident in this second version of the situation.¹⁶ However, our goal here is to simply point in the direction of psychology as both problem and possibility. Of note—and we shall extend these ideas in the following section—is the role that violence and the threat thereof plays in limiting human possibility. Next, in light of ecologizing education, we want to consider three things: ways in which the vision of the psychologically mature adult might be understood differently, a mechanism or two for protecting those who love nature and, most importantly, the psychic needs of some learners.

Violence, Eco-Double Consciousness, and the Splitting of the Psyche

Stories shared with us over the years suggest that there are a lot of Sunils out there. Many people feel deep spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical connections to the natural world, and they suffer when reading about or witnessing its destruction, disappearance, or marginalization. Often in these stories, violence and its threat are activated at multiple levels but usually for the purpose of restraining behavior, limiting voice, and expressing power over. Violence was perpetrated on Ant by Billy, but the intention was to see how it landed on Zinta and to educate Sunil about the ways that the world, power, and patriarchy work.

Violence, and the threat thereof, is a common experience for those outside the narrow masculine, white, hetero, able-bodied, settler norm. Violence toward those outside the human realm is often less acknowledged. In response, many people dull, stunt, and/or conceal their emotions and care for the natural world (as we saw in the story of the cyclist in Boston whose olfactory senses adjusted in order to survive the urban reality). Many find that this is the only way they can function in a culture where, at the interpersonal level, such attachments are frowned upon and seen as weird or flaky and where, at the personal level, there is so much violence and ongoing destruction that caring means opening oneself up to continuous pain. At a global level, the degree of destruction and pain is simply staggering.

Sufferers also tend to develop the psychological skills needed to hide connections, grief, and “weaknesses.” They do this, in part, because the culture, often represented and reenforced by the Billys of the world, “teaches” them that something is wrong with their way of being in the world. Sunil is “learning” how to be a cisgendered boy in this world and learning what might happen if he doesn’t go along with this plan. In our research and observations, this process of enculturation through “separation from” and “denial of” appears active and ongoing.

Many students we have encountered are explicit about needing to negotiate who they are, what they say, and how to be in different settings. They actively move to protect themselves in certain situations, particularly around new people or those with whom they have had previous problematic experiences. They have learned, often through bitter and painful experience, that in some places and with some people, it is truly unsafe to be green. These moves to self-protect include hiding oneself, not exposing their ecological selves, avoiding “dangerous” topics, adopting non-green language, performing “normally,” and working hard to read the threat level of the other. They adopt these techniques because they have experience with shaming, violence, and ostracism, a lesson five-year-old Sunil is in the process of learning. These threats are real, violence happens, limits are imposed, and cultural expectations are explicitly taught.

This use of violence and ostracism to force individuals to conform exists, often even more explicitly, in other diversity contexts as well (that is, in the context of gender, race, sexuality, ability, ethnicity) and often in combination (for example, Billy is “norming” both human and gender), as the eco-feminists point out. After all, the patriarchal, colonial gaze and power-over mechanisms are transferable and operate toward gendered bodies and onto more-than-human bodies in much same way. For example, the threat of violence, human male violence, acts to restrict the independent other—say, a cisgendered female—from seeking solace in, connection to, and well-being from Forest nearby. At the same time, the culture explicitly suggests that the desire to be in relationship, sitting under Cedar, talking to Dipper, or immersing one’s hands in Creek is itself an odd idea. The combination of these strictures ultimately makes such a relationship potentially impossible, even if these outdoor wilder spaces might be safer than a woman’s home and more welcoming than a nonbinary child’s school.

For some of these students, a painful psychic-splitting process occurs, where they are forced to position a green self and a “real world” self against each other. These independent ways of being in and relating to the world are often, as W. E. B. DuBois explains in his work on double consciousness, at odds with each other.¹⁷ For DuBois, a more authentic Black consciousness exists inside the “souls of black folks,” but it is often on the defensive against a culturally accepted, white consciousness that has been foisted on them by the colonial structures. DuBois writes that not only does he encounter racism, white supremacy, and violence toward his authentic Black self from the institutions and people he engages with every day—he also encounters some of that orientation within his own psyche. He is, in a way, critiquing himself with this racist lens. The same kind of psychic splitting and double consciousness appears to exist for many environmentally interested people, and it may be part of the developmental process of public schooling. That is, it may be part of the psychological makeup of the modern person.

Loss and Stewarding the World’s Sunils

For the Sunils of the world, developing psychological self-protection skills is often a response to the pain of loss—the loss of relationship, connection, to a living, gifting, caring, sharing, embracing other—as cultural norms undermine their experiences of connection to the more-than-human and as they witness ongoing violence toward the natural world. After all, to stay open to relationship, to continue to care about living beings and ecosystems, is to leave oneself open to an ongoing world of hurt. Consequently, people often move to protect themselves from further pain.

Sunil might even be told, “It is just a couple of ants,” and this might be said either out of kindness (to help him get over his distress) or in a spirit of derision. In either case, Sunil might begin to adopt this language of “just a couple” as a means of self-preservation. People may start to “not know that which they know” about the agency, vibrancy, wild-freedom, and moral significance of their flying, buzzing, greening, sun-eating relations—this, in order to simply survive in a culture that fails to acknowledge those beings and to mitigate the psychic pain, loss, and trauma such a culture induces.

In fact, all of us are impacted by loss, this separation from the natural world, this shutting down of relationship. We are also impacted by the limitations this puts on who we might become in the world. Many, like Sunil, feel helpless to respond in the face of it all. These are the individuals who wonder how Grass feels about being cut all the time, who bring Snail or Frog home in their pockets, who constantly stop to look and wonder at stuff even when everyone else is busy getting somewhere, who argue with city works people about the cutting down of the neighborhood Cherry and then hold a ceremony around either its loss or survival, who talk constantly about lessening our impact on the planet and getting outside, and who argue against filling in Marsh for yet another golf course, housing project, or mini-mall. They are also those who fill with joy and catch their breath when Damselfly lands on their fingertip, who stop in the road to watch the first flock of Trumpeter Swans headed north, who stop to greet each and every dog they encounter, who know an amazing amount about Fern, and who often have Dirt stuffed under their fingernails. As judged by the larger culture, they appear to be a little tree-huggy, weirdly emotional about Owl and Stickleback, and a touch “woolly headed,” too emotional or lacking objectivity when expounding on the gifts of nature. They feel better about themselves, healthier and happier, when in connection with the natural world and with others who are like-minded. And for the ecologizing educator, they are living members of our student groups. They are also in danger of being hurt psychologically if their connections and cares are ignored and denigrated.

The Cultural Problematics of Educating toward the Independent, Autonomous, Human Citizen

Ecologizing educators often find this psychological conversation daunting. Indeed, very little of the psychological theory connected to public education in North America involves the natural world at all. In fact, much of it appears to aim toward separation, autonomy, and a good dollop of superiority. It is deemed healthy developmentally to give up one’s “dependent relationships” with caregivers, imaginary friends, and natural beings as one “grows up.” Adult psychological health is synonymous with independence, personal strength, and autonomy. As a result, we don’t really know what a healthy, ecologically connected, relationally interdependent psyche might look like within the auspices of Western modernity. Even at these eco-schools, where relationship is prioritized, honored, and given credence, the research reveals a cultural push toward individualization, anthropocentrism, and species elitism. Still, we believe that more ecological pathways for human psychological development are possible.

First, in acknowledging that particular psychological theories may be flawed, we open ourselves up to other possibilities as they appear in feminist psychology, in eco-psychology, and in various cross-cultural psychological movements. Second, being aware that Sunils and Zintas exist and are present in our classrooms and staff rooms challenges us to be inclusive and careful with our language, our advice, and our pedagogies so as not to further their separation from the natural world. We can find ways to honor and appreciate the gifts they bring to learning and to recognize how powerful those skills of deep connection-building and that sense of belonging can be for some, even all, learners. Third, we can find ways to create spaces where those green gifts, ways of knowing, and kinds of care are possible, allowable, encouraged, even honored. Comprehending the world as complex, interdependent, vibrant, filled with agency, and deeply communicative is not wrong. It is different, and those differences reveal new questions, unexpected categories of understanding, and novel ways of being.

This concludes our very short wander through some of the theorizing involved with ecologizing education. Cultural change work in education is complex, as Camus pointed out, as it involves not only good theorizing—or maybe un- and re-theorizing—but also action. It means doing things that align with all this theory-building—and undoing those that don’t.