ecoed+literacy+goals

=ecoed literacy goals=

Environmental health literacy -- the common sense needed in late industrial society -- involves


 * People understanding their own health and wellbeing as shaped by an array of both proximate and far-off causes. Diet and cigarette smoke need to be considered, for example, as well as the health effects of transboundary air pollution and climate change.


 * People understanding that their own actions have an array of proximate and far off effects. In choosing when and what to drive, one has an affect on air quality for example. In choosing consumer products (made of vinyl, for instance), one becomes involved in an occupational health hazard.


 * People having a complex understanding of different scientific disciplines and medical specializations, aware that they rely on diverse methods, produce many types of knowledge, are ever evolving. Science needs to be understood as a crucial but far from straightforward social resource.


 * People having a complex understanding of government at various scales, from the local to transnational, made up of diverse agencies and types of experts, which really on diverse decision-making processes.


 * People understanding the history of disaster and decision-making failures, the vulnerability of some populations and regions, and varied approaches to risk management, reduction and communication.


 * People understanding (though familiarity with historical and cross-cultural examples, for instance) potential for change, and alterative ways of doing things and organizing society.

[These empirical aspects of environmental health literacy implicate more conceptual/imaginative aspects.]


 * People being able to conceptualize complex causation, without being paralyzed.


 * Peoples being able to use e empirical understanding of complex causation to identify specific points of intervention.


 * People being able to recognize the multitude of factors influencing what they are told about environmental problems (such as asthma), including vested interests disciplinary bias and blindness, and the sheer limits of knowledge.


 * People recognizing and productively dealing with diverse perspectives, avoiding the paralysis often produced by insistence on “balance” and “consensus,” leveraging heterogeneous collectivity and epistemological pluralism.


 * People having creative info-seeking practices, and animated analytic capabilities.


 * People understanding the value of scientific research, even when inconclusive, and


 * People understanding the challenges and values of deliberation and cooperative action.


 * People being able to empathize with the problems, challenges and expertise of people in diverse situations.