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You
are here: Re-evaluating our Purpose: Environmental Education and Diversity
The Graduate Program in Education at IslandWood
by Karen Matsumoto and Kristin Poppo
We are both deeply concerned about making environmental education relevant for all children, and this concern grows out of our hope to nurture children, communities and the environment in our work. We both value deeply the work done by environmental educators leading children to appreciate the natural world, yet we are concerned with how environmental educators have addressed issues of diversity. We challenge environmental educators to not only "add more color" to their organization but to reevaluate their goals and missions in light of the multicultural context in which we live and work. The following conversation probes some of the issues that we have discussed in our conversations regarding diversity and environmental education.
Karen:
I have been working in the field of EE for the past 25 years, and my personal experience has been that I have met few people of color involved at any level in environmental education. Most of the people who work in traditional environmental education are white and most of the issues they teach around are what we could call white people's issues. These are issues that are of concern to some white people in the U.S. but perhaps not to most people of color.
Kristin:
I agree 100% with your perception of the limited scope of traditional environmental education. I left the environmental field almost 15 years ago because of my frustration of what I have now come to understand as issues of white privilege and elitism. I think IslandWood's mission of inspiring community and environmental stewardship provides the opportunity for us to examine issues of both social and environmental justice. At the same time, I am deeply concerned that many organizations think that the solution to the lack of the diversity in their organization is to do anything they can to add more people of color to their staff without examining how deeply whiteness pervades their organization. I think those of us who work in predominantly white organizations need to examine how the power and privilege of being white has shaped the organizations within which we work. In many cases, environmental organizations focus on issues related to nature appreciation, endangered species, and wilderness preservation. I agree that these are exceedingly important causes but being able to commit to such causes is reliant on a large amount of privilege including living free from oppression and having the ability and interest to access such areas. Therefore, environmental education has often been nature education and has not looked closely at environmental and social issues that face people who live in poverty and people of color.
Karen:
Although the band-aid approach to the diversity issue is to try to hire people of color, it doesn't work unless the organization is really willing to commit to altering their course and direction to embrace environmental and justice issues. Research has shown that the greatest issues for people of color include racism, poverty, educational equity, and environmental justice. These issues are, for many people, intimately connected to concerns of day-to-day survival and the preservation of opportunities for their children. Somehow, the environmental movement has lost sight of environmental justice issues, and moved on to something else. In the process, we have lost the direct connection between the "environment" and any relevancy it may have for the day-to-day lives of urban children.
Kristin:
I think the first step in making environmental education more relevant to all people is by examining how we understand the word environment. Based on much of the mainstream curriculum I have seen, environment is understood as either wilderness areas where human impact is minimal or natural areas that are adversely impacted by humans. This is quite different from the definition affirmed by the environmental justice movement, which sees environment as the place "where we live, work, learn, play and pray." This broader understanding of environment is more closely aligned with IslandWood's mission of inspiring community and environmental stewardship. If environmental educators embraced this understanding of environment, bridges might begin to be built between predominantly white organizations and more diverse groups.
Karen:
But how can we inspire community and environmental stewardship? How can IslandWood and other environmental learning centers get past the perception that we are representatives of a "white people's agenda"?
Before bridges can be built between these organizations, there needs to be conversation around these issues. Environmental education needs to be open to changing the way they do business, and that means recognizing the wider connections between environmental concerns and social and economic justice. It also means celebrating diversity at all levels in the field of environmental education. There is simply a lack of representation of people of color and their perspectives.
In a recent conversation with an environmental justice leader in our community, she said that "environmental education must tell the truth about what white culture has done to the environment and why. Why do white people brag about protecting the environment when they are the ones that f***ed it up?" This response demonstrates a well-founded suspicion of white motives, and is representative of a widespread feeling of resentment among people of color who don't think that white people have the right to claim ownership of the environmental movement when they have not taken ownership of the problems.
Environmental education often fails to address issues in such a way that it is clear where the problems originate. This kind of clarity would mean being honest about the history of industrial capitalism, colonial exploitation, the institutionalization of poverty, and intentional disenfranchisement of people of color. This way of looking at the issues might be uncomfortable for many white people, which is one reason these issues are not prominent on the agenda of mainstream environmental education in the United States.
The same goes for environmental education. Do most environmental educators really care about these issues?
Kristin
I'm not sure. I see very little diversity in environmental education curriculum except for the romanticized portrayals of first peoples. I think many mainstream white organizations have gotten quite adept at talking the talk by embracing the need to be more diverse, yet those same organizations are still struggling to walk the walk. Since I am most passionate around the eradication of childhood hunger, I am continually surprised that this issue is not addressed more frequently in the field of environmental education. We live in a world where thirty thousand children die each day of hunger related issues. In this country, one child in five is hungry at some point each month. At IslandWood, we serve many schools that have exceedingly high numbers of children who are on free and reduced lunch – a program created to reduce childhood hunger. At the same time, hunger is closely related to so many environmental issues including deforestation, water scarcity, global warming, the depletion of top soil, and ecological imbalance of pests and predators as well as political and social issues relating to the imbalance of power. Yet, as environmental educators, we have not often looked at hunger as an important topic for our curriculum. I would argue that if we examined the issue of hunger looking at the environmental and social issues surrounding hunger with our students, we would begin to build more trust among organizations committed to social and environmental justice.
Karen:
For an environmental education organization's work to be relevant, for it to have a lasting value, it has to connect with the lives of children and point to ways that they can make a difference. This means first identifying the problems around us, many of which are invisible. Environmental education needs to embrace issues that are totally relevant and are a high priority in the local community and to the broadest possible range of people and make them a part of our everyday curriculum. This means being inclusive of people of color and considering global justice issues in curriculum writing and decision-making for environmental education. Organizations must commit to anti-racism and anti-poverty and commit to the addressing the issues that are of greatest importance to those they seek to serve.
We now know that diversity is critical to a strong, healthy environment. As environmental educators, we know that diverse ecosystems are healthier, creating a powerful synergy not available to monoculture systems. This same concept of diversity should apply to the communities where we live, the organizations we are part of, and the teaching that we do.
During her 25 years in environmental education, Karen Matsumoto, M.Ed.has worked as a naturalist for the National Park Service, an elementary and middle school teacher and university instructor, a natural resource consultant, and a Master Gardener Program coordinator. She is currently Science Coordinator at IslandWood.
She loves to write, draw, and field sketch with children and teachers and has taught nature journaling and science workshops for 10 years. Education: B.S. in Conservation of Natural Resources, University of California, Berkeley; Teaching Credential, University of California, Los Angeles; M.Ed. in Instructional Design / Technology, Utah State University; Certificate in Scientific Illustration, University of Washington. You may contact Karen at karenm@islandwood.org.
Kristin Poppo, Ph.D., is the Graduate Program Coordinator at IslandWood. During the past fifteen years, Kristin has worked in both education and ministry exploring children's ethical formation. The educational philosophy that she brings to IslandWood and hopes to share with graduate students is grounded in the belief that children will only learn to respect others if they have been treated as valued members of learning communities. Education: B.A. in Philosophy and Religion, Colgate University; M.S.T., Antioch / New England; M.Div., Harvard Divinity School; Ph.D. in Educational Foundations, University of North Carolina-Greensboro.
© May 2003 New Horizons for Learning
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