NT_Field_Journal


 * May 8, 2014**

Another thing that should change with our educational system is the idea of a semester. A semester is a horrible length of time. By the last week of classes, students have gotten used to the homework load, the teaching style of the professors, made friends with classmates, and in some cases, begun to enjoy the material if they didn't already. And then it all ends. Sometimes you have nothing in common with your classmates any more, and you wonder, what did we used to talk about besides homework? The professors move on and you wonder if they'll remember you in the huge swarm of new students that they have to teach. And the cycle repeats. A new semester means going through everything all over again - adapting to the time schedule, the type of homework, the teaching and testing style of the professors, and new classmates. Adding all of this stress to students - is it really necessary? Is there anyway we could have year-long classes instead, with the same people, and just many different units of material? Is there a better way?


 * April 29, 2014**

As the semester ends, I find myself wondering how to incorporate all that I’ve learned through the course of this class into my future career. As a computer scientist, my role in aiding environmental education is not clear cut. My own dilemma makes me wonder about the role of environmental education in our society.

When someone hears about the dangerous effects of pollution on the environment, there are two reactions. The first reaction is to passionately pursue a career as a sustainability expert, environmental engineer, etc. - all careers directly involved with helping the environment. The second reaction is to decide that nothing they can do will ever change much of anything, and they will pursue careers in other things instead. What I am trying to say is, there is a lack of information available on how to balance a technical career with sustainability and environmental care. Computer science, for instance, relies entirely on the existence of an energy source, as do many careers. How should a computer scientist help the environment, then?

I'm very bad at answering my own questions, and unfortunately, this one will be left hanging, too.


 * April 25, 2014**

After hearing the lecture on hydraulic fracturing yesterday, this news is absolutely amazing! (http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_25630943/major-oil-amp-gas-firm-list-drilling-chemicals)

I sincerely hope that the list of chemicals will help scientists to know what to test polluted water for, and maybe, when people see what chemicals are being unleashed on the environment, they will begin to demand better management of fracking chemical wastes.


 * April 22, 2014**

Although it is true that there should be more emphasis on environmental education in schools, I think there is a problem of weighting its importance too heavily. Today, in the public discussion about environment and public education, one of the children who we have been working with for the past 7 or 8 weeks made a worrisome comment. He mentioned that school time should focus more on the Earth (about half of the time, according to him) and less on the normal stuff – this normal stuff being math, language, history, etc. Granted, he was only third grade. However, I think this comment points out an issue with our attempts at spreading environmental education. There are two extremes – either environmental education is so unimportant that it should be left out of curriculum altogether, or, the push-back is, that environmental education is so important that it should be our main focus.

The Earth as a large system is full of many interconnected components, and math, science, history, and reading are all equally important. In fact, in order to actually care for the environment in a manner that will prove helpful, we need to understand how the environment works, how our lifestyles work, and how we can get the two to work together. Math is invaluable to understanding how the universe functions, and is crucial to engineering; engineering in particular is necessary for creating new machines and transportation devices that will be less harmful to the environment. History is useful to our understanding of past mistakes and successes, so we can build on this knowledge. Reading and writing skills are some of the major communication skills needed in order to spread knowledge and gain information.

If there was some way to integrate the importance of these subjects along with environmental education – some way to teach even younger students some of the practical applications of math, say – then I think that we would be more successful at turning out good citizens who will make real changes in the world.


 * April 21, 2014**

What should we teach in textbooks?

I ask this question because environmental education could be categorized as science, yet I have thought for a long time that, particularly for new science and research, both sides of an issue should be presented. This is based on the belief that science itself is questioning “facts” and hypotheses, and students should learn that science is a dynamic, changing subject – not a static encyclopedia. But according to my logic, accepted science would have to be presented as dynamic, as well. Something like the law of gravity, for example, cannot be reconciled with quantum mechanics, which creates problems for scientists studying black holes in outerspace.

So perhaps a better question would be, where does dynamic science begin and static science end? Is there such a thing as static science? And what level of uncertainty is helpful to students, and doesn’t create chaos instead?


 * April 19, 2014**

According to this article, some scientists are concerned that the fires used in the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest could cause vast amounts of global warming. This is something that I find much less convincing than other environmental problems. Mind you, I think the deforestation of the Amazon is terrible; the rainforest is extremely beautiful in all of the pictures I have ever seen, and I am sure the plants do help absorb carbon and provide oxygen for the parts of the world. But forest fires occur naturally every year. And volcanoes occur naturally, too. It seems highly probable that a few large volcanoes could create more carbon in the atmosphere than any manmade forest fires. As a disclaimer, though, I really do not know much about the science behind global warming, and I could be completely wrong. http://www.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2014/04/amazon-deforestation-fires


 * April 16, 2014**

I saw this article on acid rain and how it is taking a while for lakes to recover from acid rain. It made me wonder, will we ever see a world that is completely sustainable? This is a rather dumb question, since the answer is so obvious. There is no way in our lifetime that we will see this. Even if everyone in the world starting living in an eco-friendly manner at this exact moment, the world would still be all messed up from previous years of pollution. It will take a long time for nuclear waste to decay, for instance, and some species have been entirely obliterated beyond the point of return. This is a depressing thought.

As a Christian, I always turn back to my faith for answers to this depression. Someday, the world will be renewed and restored, and there will be no more death or disease or pollution. All that is beautiful in the world will be brought forth, more beautiful than we can ever imagine. Now, someone could argue that if I think the world will be fixed in the end anyways, why bother to care for the Earth at all? But I would answer this by saying that by caring for the Earth, first of all, we are caring for God’s creation, and we are letting the beauty that God has placed in creation to shine forth. And secondly, we are caring for the people who live here. And those two reasons combined are part of why we should strive for environmental protection – from a Christian perspective anyway, in case anyone was wondering.

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/2014/apr/acid-rain/


 * April 14, 2014**

It was very helpful to learn about the double bind in class. I’ve experienced this phenomenon before, but didn’t know what to call it. The situation was like this: I was in an honors program that required you to have good grades in order to participate in it. However, each professor in the program kept on talking about how grades were social constructs, and we should be more concerned in learning material and enjoying the class than in getting good grades. Yet each professor doled out grades, and each student had to be concerned about grades in order to stay in the program. It often felt like a contradiction, or like the professors were somehow being hypocritical. Perhaps it was merely the fact that a class pointing out social constructs was abiding by social constructs in the same moment….


 * April 11, 2014**

This article on the possible inaccuracy of some measurements of air-borne pollution is worrisome. In this case, it reveals that there is a significant amount more of air-borne particles than initially thought. This case raises two questions.

First of all, if previous studies about pollution from cars can be rendered inaccurate, what other pollutions could we be improperly studying? Are we overestimating or (as in this case) underestimating the effects of some of these pollutions? And secondly, what chemical emissions have been allowed by the law due to a misunderstanding of the emissions significance?

For the first problem, at least, educating the general public about environmental problems could go a long way. The more people working on a problem, the more reliable the science and, eventually, the solutions will be.

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/2014/apr/airborne-particles/


 * April 9, 2014**

I wonder what makes us so eager to split everything up into boxes? I know I’ve mentioned before, how our society is too interested in specialization – how people have to specialize in one thing or another – but I’m realizing that this specialization goes further than just majors in college.

We grow up thinking that there are people who are good at music or art and people who are good at science or math, and because we have placed everyone into their respective box, there is no need to try and step out of the box. A child who is told that writing isn’t his thing and math is instead will stop trying to write and simply pursue math instead, when in actuality, with a little effort, he could have become a better writer than a mathematician.

I think this could apply to environmental concerns, as well. An engineer might not feel obligated to care about the environment because the environment is not in his box. How can we overcome this divisiveness in our culture?


 * April 8, 2014**

When dealing with a system as huge and complex as the Earth, there are hundreds of factors that need to be considered. For instance, when dealing with the effects technology has on mental capacity, we might instantly draw the conclusion that our brains are overstimulated so much that our attention spans have become shorter. But, this shortened attention span could be attributed to a change in the chemicals and pesticides we are exposed to/consume everyday. Also, our ability to study the brain has increased so much, that perhaps we are simply noticing problems that were there all along but we never had information to properly investigate them.

This same principle applies to the study of species in different systems. At times, it seems like an animal is on the brink of extinction, so we try to help it succeed by removing its predators or competitors and introducing more of its prey. Within a few years time, we begin to see a huge increase in that animal's population, and soon that animal has taken over more than it should. I am not a biologist, so I cannot pretend to understand all of the factors that effect a species, but I am familiar with a model of ecosystems in mathematics - the differential equation. A set of these equations explains a predator-prey relationship, and many times, this relationship is chaotic; it is not too often that the populations of predators and prey are the same (example graph of these equations here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cheetah_Baboon_LV.jpg). So when we grow too concerned about a disappearing species, such as bees, for example, it is important to consider this cycle before panicking too much.

It would be so much easier to figure out what factors are actually problematic and which aren't if only we could model the world somehow.... Not sure what this has to do with the educating people about the environment, though. It definitely stresses the importance of the inter-connectedness of the world, and how dangerous it can be to over-specialize in one particular topic. It goes back to the basic problem of teaching students without overwhelming them with too much information and yet not over-simplifying the world.


 * April 5, 2014**

There was the article we read a while back about framing our point of view in a way that is convincing and satisfying for the public. I remembered this article when I was thinking about how our culture views sustainability in general. Perhaps part of the problem with having more people actively participate in "green" living is that they think this life-style is expensive. For example, people associate an environmentally-friendly life-style with solar panels, hybrid cars, and eating lots of fruit and vegetables. But there are lots of people living in Troy alone that cannot afford to buy enough healthy food to sustain themselves, let alone purchase a solar panel. While biking may be better for the environment than taking a car and cheaper than taking the bus everyday, many of these poorer individuals tend to have physical issues that might prevent them from biking. In order to encourage people to participate in eco-friendly life-styles, I think we need to frame the issue differently, by suggesting inexpensive ways for people to participate.


 * March 21, 2014**

I was reading this article about a nuclear waste repository: [], and it made me think about the side-effects of other fuel sources – namely, coal and fossil fuels.

Mining coal and oil drilling has been blamed for contaminating water sources. CO2, the waste product of burning these energy sources, has been blamed for global warming. But when compared to the highly toxic wastes resulting from nuclear fission, which is worse – global warming or nuclear waste? Supposing a renewable energy source that is actual efficient and sustainable can never be found, what would people end up choosing?

Nuclear wastes are known to be extremely dangerous, so people would use more caution and think about how they are processing wastes; fossil fuels are taken for granted, and, while people exercise some caution with these (such as keeping these away from open flames), they are more likely to use them without restraint. In addition, the materials used in nuclear fission are hard for the average person to obtain, whereas, currently, fossil fuels are readily accessible at any gas station.

Nuclear power plants will leak radiation when workers begin to stop monitoring the plant properly, and become careless with their jobs. But this radiation only affects a select area. On the other hand, the major side-effect of fossil fuel burning is global warming, which affects the entire globe – including poorer populations who have no access to the fossil fuels, yet suffer. This would imply that nuclear energy is more humanitarian than fossil fuel usage. Those who contaminate should, ideally, be the ones – the only ones – to suffer from the contamination.


 * March 19, 2014**

I have growing respect for teachers in the classroom. When they are working with younger children, they have to take care of the behavioral problems of the students in addition to teaching the material required by state law. When they are working with older students, the behavioral issues are not as noticeable, but it becomes harder to prepare for class; they have to know exactly what they are going to teach, how they are going to teach it, and they have to know their material well enough that they can answer any questions that might be asked in addition.

Teachers have to play the role of a parent, performer (in presenting material with an infectious enthusiasm and energy), and teacher all at the same time. And they have to please their employer, the each student’s parents, school requirements, and the state (with laws and such). And yet, such super-humans actually exist….


 * March 18, 2014**

I was reading about the disappearance of the Malaysian plane last past week. There were some artists on board – calligraphy artists. Maybe there were other people on board who had gone through college and graduated with a headful of knowledge. All that talent – all that knowledge – lost in the flash of a moment in time.

Working with the students in the various elementary programs that we have makes me wonder what each student’s life will be like. Will they grow up happily and get good jobs? Will they have to face a bad economy and crises of all kinds? And, if I were their teacher, what would be the best way to prepare them for the future?

In the classroom, since we are working with younger students, it seems like “any answer will do.” If we ask a question and get an answer, we act positive and encouraging towards them even if it was a weak or incorrect answer. But as they grow older, the world gets harsh. A wrong answer could lead to a bad grade, a failed job-interview, mockery by their peers, and so on. How can we possibly prepare them for that?

Furthermore, in one of our readings, “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” Friere talked about how the focus of public education should be on building up good citizens – essentially, preparing students for the future. The whole idea of teaching sustainability is a good start to preparing students, for a couple different reasons.

First, hopefully, they will learn responsibility and critical thinking as they learn about the environment and how they can affect it. Secondly, if the education program is good, they will get experience taking care of the environment, and learn “empowerment” (which is a word that makes me picture Superman), or that they have to ability to make an impact through simple action.

(Sorry, no journals were written over spring break!)
 * Spring Break Week (March 10 - 14)**


 * March 7, 2014 **

I found this intriguing article about researchers using common silicone bracelets to determine what chemicals a person has been exposed to. The bracelets pick up traces or chemicals as the person wears them, and they are then analyzed. When we think about the impact these bracelets may have on our society, there are a couple things to consider.

First of all, if we would a cheap and quick way to analyze the bracelets – or allow wearers to analyze the bracelets on their own – then this would be a great way to make people aware of the amount of chemicals in circulation, and their own level of risk. If the bracelets can be developed further, so that they change color to alert the wearer of the presence of a pollutant, that would be informative and potentially save a life (a person wandering into a field that has been recently sprayed with pesticide, for instance). With the knowledge of the vast number of harmful pollutants in the world that we are exposed to throughout our lives, people would begin to think more seriously about the environment.

Secondly, however, what else could these bracelets tell us? If they can be analyzed for pollutants, we could potentially find out where the wearer has gone. And perhaps some well-meaning researcher will attach a transmitter to the bracelet, so they can find out exactly where harmful pollutants reside. This could become a problem, however, as a less-well-meaning person could gain access to the transmitter’s signal, and find out exactly where the wearer is at any moment. []


 * March 5, 2014 **

The trip to Tamarac today was even more fun than the last trip. This time, I was familiar with several of the children in the third grade (having worked with them during the Thursday research session, too). In the first grade, I worked with the same group I had worked with last time; the children recognized me before I recognized them. I felt like the lessons and participation went a lot smoother because the children were more comfortable asking questions and expressing ideas with someone they knew.

I helped with the worm bin in the third grade class and found it interesting to watch the children’s different reactions to the worms. Some of them found the worms and compost really gross, but others couldn’t wait to hold the worms. One girl told me she was going to play with them during break. The odd thing was that even the children who shuddered the most and denounced worms as being gross, nevertheless, wanted to hold a worm at least once. I’m not sure if it was peer pressure or genuine curiosity – maybe both.

In the first grade, the children were very drawn to the story, “Michael Bird Boy” (which, by the way, used a term I found misleading; there is no such thing as an annual //comet// shower – that would imply multiple comets, especially with the accompanying picture. There are annual //meteor// showers, however, often caused by a single, passing comet. The icy comet melts (the water vaporizes, actually) as it comes into contact with solar radiation, and dust particles break off and burn in the Earth’s atmosphere, leaving streaks across the sky). They understood the effects of smog quite well after it. My group developed a story about a girl named Molly who liked to climb trees, and a boy named Pollock who liked to eat apples, but what scared of heights. Molly would climb the trees and throw apples down to Pollock so he could eat them. But one day, smog came! Molly couldn’t breathe! So she couldn’t climb the tree, Pollock couldn’t eat apples, and the tree began to die….

So the lesson I can pull out of all of this is that conveying important lessons through stories is an effective way to teach complex systems to anyone – not just children.


 * March 2, 2014**

I went into the Sustainability film unsure of what to expect. I thought vaguely that it might include heart-wrenching footage of animals dying because of pollution, but I was pleasantly surprised. The Engineers Without Borders organization has a fascinating mission goal, and it made me want to join them (even though I’m a CS major). There were three things I got out of the film.

First of all, it was interesting to observe the way in which each EWB chapter crafted their films. Some of the films were a little blurry or unfocused, while others had excellent, clear footage. The content was organized differently in each, too. A few groups strongly conveyed the culture of the people they were working with. One group did a great job explaining what problems unclean water caused. Other films rambled, with the people simply saying “it was a great time,” essentially, without going into many details.

The second thing that stood out was the sense of community that every culture expressed. At RPI, I’m surrounded by a culture that ignores each other. If two people are standing in the same hallway and they don’t know each other, they stare at their phones and pretend to not notice anyone else. If someone drops a stack of papers on the ground, how many people just walk by? How many times has someone let a door close in your face instead of holding it open for you, because they didn’t bother to look behind them? Yet in the other cultures, if strangers saw that someone needed help, they jumped right in, no questions asked.

And finally, there was the organization’s practice of getting the community to contribute to the project, and leaving the community with the plans and ability to get materials so they could fix and build the projects on their own, after the EWB team had left. As a Christian, I’ve run into a lot of charitable organizations, and one of the problems with some of these organizations is that they limit charity to just giving away material items. This makes their supporters “feel good” and want to donate. But it is not real charity. Real charity is doing what EWB does – involving the community in the work and teaching skills and information that will transform the community in a good way. And as a Christian, I think that the Gospel – the most joyful news in the universe – is the most sustainable thing you can give a community, whether it is impoverished or not. It gives us a reason to care for the Earth – because God called the earth good, and has set us as stewards over it.


 * February 28, 2014 **

In Alaska, there is apparently a struggle happening between the EPA, whom is protecting the largest salmon fishery business in the world, and a company that wants to open the Pebble mine, which promises to hold vast resources in precious metals. The EPA has a large amount of research available about the dire impacts the mine would have on the fishing industry nearby, and is trying to stop the mine from being approved.

From an environmental stand point (and coming from someone who enjoys eating salmon), it is important to consider the fishing business in this whole venture. However, if the EPA succeeds in stopping the mine from being opened, then I am concerned about the potential effects this will have on other future businesses. What is some company can manage to convince the EPA that it is more environmentally-friendly than a competitor or up-start? Perhaps their competitors do not have the money to function at the same level of environmentally-friendliness. Wouldn’t it be possible to gain the EPA’s support to such an extent that the company becomes a monopoly?

Another thing that concerns me about this is the fact that this particular salmon fishery is the largest in the world. We were taught in the unit on media literacy that we should examine what enterprises/money is backing science. Could the EPA be hoping to gain some monetary compensation of some sort by backing the fishery?

Part of environmental education is getting people to learn how to think and reason for themselves. Even the best environmental research can be tainted by bias or even personal gain. http://www.adn.com/2014/02/28/3350190/epa-starts-process-that-could.html


 * February 27, 2014**

Building on my last entry, how can we reach out to all different kinds of learners in the school system? There are a couple of solutions I can think of, and also some problems those solutions may cause.

My first solution is one that I realize would not work for everyone, and that would be homeschooling. For myself, homeschooling allowed me to learn at my own pace, but also required self-motivation. I always wanted to be a scientist of some sort, so my desire to learn math and science motivated me to work hard to understand all of the concepts I was being taught.

Secondly, rather than having grades based on age-level, what if school became structured like a game? In order to get to the next level, you have to pass a series of tests of some sort, but you could keep on taking them until you succeeded. Students would have to have the self-motivation to get to the next level, and they could learn at their own pace. There are a hundred problems with this system, of course (what happens when a person changes schools? What if a student is stuck in level 5 for 5 years? And so on…). But that’s all I’ve got at the moment….


 * February 25, 2014**

I was determined to write journal entries that were well-thought out and worthy of being read. But I can’t write those right now. This entry will be more of a conglomeration of stuff that hopefully sticks together.

It’s midterms and my head is spinning. It’s times like these that I think, if only I had more time to think about this material, I would do fine. I would understand it, and it would stick. And it makes me wonder if maybe one of the issues with our education system is the idea of “quantity over quality.” Before, I’ve said that the wider variety of things a person knows, the more connections between things they will be able to make, in order to come up with creative solutions. And now I am saying that if we cut down on the amount of information a person has to learn, they would learn better. It is a horrible contradiction, one which I cannot figure out right now. But the problem is this: say a slow-learner (like myself) is forced to understand everything quickly. They will either focus on a few subjects and do really well in those, or they will feel overwhelmed, study a little bit of everything, and consequently fail everything. In both cases, they end up feeling stupid, and are more likely to stop caring about school altogether, deciding that it is “not their thing.” But in reality, they could be quite successful in one particular subject.

In the end, I would have to agree with the video we watched in the beginning of the semester – education is too generalized as a one-size-fits-all sort of thing. There are so many different kinds of learners out there, so many different kinds of talents and needs. Until we are able to start reaching out to each kind individually, nothing will change.


 * February 21, 2014 **

This article discussed the new law being proposed that would require farmers to get annual training on pesticide safety, and require signs to warn people about areas that had been just sprayed with pesticides. Although I am usually doubtful about more laws being a good way to solve problems, I think this law would be more than reasonable. Farmers may find the annual training vexing, but it would be a good way to warn them of the potential health risks they could be taking on, and hopefully make them consider if the risks outweigh the benefits or not. As for posting warning signs, I am surprised that they do not do this already, and I think it is vitally important. As an anecdote, my grandfather worked as a plumber at a college, and one day, they had sprayed pesticides on the plants and didn’t tell him. He went unconscious while he was working there, and they found him on the ground. Ever since then, his hands have had a shaking problem that has progressed through the years. We recently learned that he has an advanced stage of Parkinson’s, and we strongly suspect it is related to the pesticide incident.

We need to make the public aware of the risks pesticides pose, and ask them if they really want to be ingesting chemicals that, in high concentrations, could cause cancer and other diseases. But, what do we replace pesticides with? Perhaps someone could hold a large competition to see who could come up with the most effective natural “pesticides.” With enough publicity, we would be able to reveal the problems of pesticides to people at large, and at the same moment, work towards coming up with a solution to the problem of growing crops without pesticides (infestations of bugs and such). []


 * February 19, 2014 **

I’ve remarked before that it is incredibly easy to come up with problems in a system, and quite difficult to come up with solutions to those problems. So this time, I will try to generate ideas for solving one of the basic problems – mainly, how to make people interested in science and learning.

There are three basic ways an ordinary student is influenced: family, school, and the media (one could add church to this list, but I’ll leave that off for now). As a general observation, children who grow up in families that are excited about science and education will also be excited about science and education. We cannot change current families per se, unless we can reach the parents on some level. But we can influence future families by reaching out the children (and, sometimes, the passion children have for a subject cause the parents to become interested in the subject, too). The next influence is the media, which I will discard from this argument because it is an incredibly expensive system to change, and very politically/commercially influenced. So the remaining influence is the school.

One of the biggest ways the school could help student become interested in subjects is by employing passionate teachers. As an anecdote (I love anecdotes), I first became really interested in mathematics after being taught by an incredibly excitable math professor. She came into the classroom the first day with an amazing energy, which she somehow carried throughout the entire semester. The following semester, however, I was taught by another professor, who openly told the class when he found some piece of the material boring. And boring was usually synonymous with hard. His attitude made it harder for me to enjoy the subject.

Another way to help students could be to assign them to mentors of some kind – mentors who could work one on one with students and answer their questions. I don’t think asking questions is encouraged enough. The atmosphere seems to be either “don’t ask questions or you’ll look like you’re dumb because you don’t understand the material,” or “don’t ask questions because you’ll look like you are trying to be a teacher’s pet.” If there was some way to pair up younger students with older students or teachers, this might make students more comfortable with asking questions, and maybe make them excited about certain careers if their mentors are, too.

This suggestion is far from actually solving the problem, but it’s all I’ve got right now. Personally, I’m not sure how to instill excitement and motivation, except by being excited and motivated, and expressing these during one’s interactions with people.


 * February 18, 2014 **

This journal entry will be a bit less philosophical than other entries, and probably a little redundant. It’s amazing how much a head-ache and cold affects one’s mental capacity.

After spending time with the children and seeing how they think about the sources of energy and electricity, I wonder how much most adults and teenagers understand these things better than the third-graders. What if the majority of the population things in terms of flipping a light switch and bingo! the light goes on, rather than wondering what is causing the light. Today we use so much complex technology that most of us cannot understand how everything we use is working. How much should we know?

So, two questions: How much do people know? How much should they know? This could apply to the environment; it could apply to the appliances they use. Is it ok to say that as long as they know enough to know they should care about the environment, we’ve taught them enough? That won’t work. Suppose a person hears an argument in support of limiting oil usage, and they depend on this argument to back them up on why they work towards minimizing their oil usage. But then the person hears another argument – this time refuting the previous one. The entire world seems to fall apart, and the person is left wondering what is up and what is down. So merely teaching isn’t enough; we need to instill in people the desire to learn, so that they will pursue learning on their own. Then, when they encounter a new argument, they will know how to look up information and evaluate both sides for themselves. Did that make any sense?


 * February 15, 2014 **

The media literacy curriculum and the documentary on PR were fascinating to me. My disillusionment with the media began in high-school, when I became aware that, during the presidential election campaigns, the media was clearly favoring the Democrats and Liberal politics. There was a time when I was glued to conservative blogs, convinced that these blogs had the “real” news. But as I entered college, I began to see that these blogs had their own agenda they were trying to push. There was no such thing as an unbiased media, and no way of truly knowing what was happening in our own country, let alone the world.

When it came to promotional material, the fakeness of commercials and ads was amusing to me, so I studied their techniques and used them to make up jingles and catch-lines for fun. However, I never looked for those same techniques in the news. I think there was some part of me that still assumed that the news was mostly true, and so to learn that approximately 50% of it is fake astonished me. It makes me wonder what is true and what isn’t. And the things that we say, “Oh, but I know // this // is true!” might be things that we just want to believe. For instance, what if most of the environmental news is actually made up by companies hoping to find a niche selling green products? What if most of the science backing it is skewed because the scientists will get funding if they produce a certain result? The questions continue.

But assuming that dangers to the environment are real, the next question would be, is it ethical to use PR to teach about the environment? If we were to steadfastly believe that the environment is in danger and we must do everything to protect it, then would it be right to manipulate people into feeling anxious about the future of the environment? Would it be right to pseudo-educate people by working on their feelings rather than supplying them with facts that they may or may not read? And the giant risk that could result from this is that people would eventually become tired of having their feelings worked upon, and stop caring about the environment altogether. Therefore, we must conclude that the best way to make people care is by supplying them with facts: and these people must first have the capacity to digest these facts and the certainty that these facts are absolutely true. The first we can theoretically give them by teaching them basic logic, and training them to think for themselves rather than following the crowd. But the latter – can we be certain the fasts // are // true? And how?


 * February 14, 2014 **

This article made me consider two points. First of all, why do companies add other ingredients to their pesticides along with the active ingredients? Are the active ingredients not effective on their own? Does the pesticide fail as a pesticide if it is not used in combination with other things? In that case, what makes the active ingredient active? And second of all, the article makes the claim that a lot of pesticides and similar chemicals have bad effects on living cells. However, the last paragraph admits that most of these “effects do not cause cell death,” so the studies are forced to look at the balance of hormones and chemicals in the cells themselves, to spot some imbalance which they assume is caused by a pesticide. When we begin to consider the very slight changes in a cell, it is harder to know whether it is actually caused by the pesticides, or whether it is caused by some other factor. Obviously, there will be many controls set up for the experiment, but I’m still doubtful how much cause and effect can be measured when it is relying on tiny shifts in balances.

So how to tie these musing into educating people about the environment? It is clear that whether or not the pesticides are causing harm to living cells, pesticides are unnatural, and we should probably be testing them more before releasing them on the environment. Unfortunately, as the article about Tyrone Hayes and the media literacy curriculum pointed out, the pesticide business is being driven by companies hoping to make a profit. When a company is anxious for money, they are more likely to cut corners and release a product before they have complete confidence in its safeness. Alerting people to the potential dangers of pesticides would be a good way to counteract this. If people think that a pesticide on their food might adversely affect them, they may collectively protest, forcing more thorough testing before pesticide products are released.

[]than-testing-of-active-ingredient-alone-reveals/


 * February 12 **

Working with the students at Tamarac left me feeling encouraged about the prospect of educating children on the environment. The third-graders, in particular, were not just interested in our science centers - they were excited to learn. I could not help but compare their reactions to the college students in my classes, who typically display boredom during lectures by sleeping, eating, or studying social media, even while some incredibly fascinating concept is being presented. This leads me to two points, and then I’ll discuss the classroom experience. First, if we could teach the children about the environment while they are still excitable and interested in learning, we could probably make caring for the environment become a long-lasting habit for them. Second, and perhaps more importantly, if we could somehow sustain the students’ interest in science throughout the higher grades, we might begin to see more students entering scientific fields, and consequently see a rise in scientific discovers and technology advancements, which in turn would supply us with solutions to major energy problems. The question then would be: how do we sustain interest in science and learning in general? I’m solution-less again. Maybe I’ll tackle this question later.

As for the science stations, I think the systems model developed for the third-graders worked very well for analyzing systems. The aquaponics system was well suited for the age level, and the students seemed to absorb many of the concepts we threw at them. Overall, both the model and the systems chosen for analysis were excellent.

However, the systems model used in the first-grade class did not seem effective to me. The experiment with air pollution that we started with was good, and I think the students understood it quite well. When it came to filling out the step-up-to-solution model, I started running into problems. The first problem was that the children’s attention span was spent. After playing with water and drink-mixes, they were not ready to start a paper activity. They were restless and unfocussed. None of them seemed to understand why the model was important, and I think the wording of “the causes of the problem’s causes” was too confusing. The other problem I ran into was lack of time. Every time I got a really good question about the experiment we were doing, I had just started answering it when a teacher clapped, and the children had to focus on something else. Asking questions, though a little more time-consuming, is one of the best ways to learn, so I was sorry that I never had a chance to explain answers.

In general, though, the children were more enthusiastically receptive of our presentations than I anticipated, which leaves me hopeful for the future of education. If I were to consider this experience to be “research,” however, I would have to take into account that the children we met were from a select group of the population, and are therefore not representative of the entirety or even the majority of 1st and 3rd graders.


 * February 7 **

I read this article about tritium-contaminated water in relation to nuclear power plants and I was not sure what to conclude by the end of it. The article started out by discussing the large amounts of tritium being released by nuclear power plants into the environment and consequently traveling to water sources, and how this was raising the question of whether the water was safe to drink.

However, by the end of the article, we had learned that tritium is naturally produced high in the Earth’s atmosphere and, when it rains, joins the water sources. And the very last statement in the article is a quote from a researcher, Kocher, who has been studying the health side effects of tritium for 30 years, and concludes that there is little to no risk in drinking tritium, as it will all “flush out of your body” eventually.

I am left wondering, is there a risk or isn’t there? And if there isn’t, why did this article start out as if there is? And this makes me wonder about the way we approach environmental education, the nature of science, and why some people simply aren’t interested. Most of this builds on the thoughts from my previous journal entry.
 * 1) We teach environmental education in white and black. Global warming is happening, all of its side effects are bad, etc. But science is not this clear-cut most of the time.
 * 2) Science is the process of questioning until we arrive at the truth. We come up with hypotheses and continually test these hypotheses until we are certain that they are true. And part of that testing is continually questioning – even if it is something we are positively certain of. Teaching without encouraging questioning leads to the next problem.
 * 3) When confronted with an article that is questioning and does not conclude, people become confused because they have not been taught to question, and this confusion leads to disinterest in otherwise important topics, such as the environment.

So, to summarize, maybe people aren’t as interested in the environment because they do not actually know what is happening in the environment, and they do not what is happening because they have never been taught to question. Or something. I’m not really sure. This entry will have to end without a conclusion. []


 * February 5 **

I don’t know how many times I have heard that the icebergs are melting. It is a very real problem, and we should be concerned about discovering what factors are causing this melt-down, but I feel like I have heard “the ice caps are melting” too many times.

Perhaps part of the problem with environmental education is that people are tired of being bombarded with so many articles about global warming. Or maybe they are confused about whether it is happening or not because of the critics of global warming.

This latter possibility leaves us with two conflicts. 1. If all scientists came to a reasonable conclusion, namely that global warming is or is not happening, and all scientists agreed with each other, then, with the problem properly established, people could work towards coming up with a solution. But then, people would not learn the basics of reasoning things out for themselves to come to conclusions; they would always have the conclusions handed to them. 2. If we continue to have a healthy intellectual atmosphere of scientist collaborating and questioning each other, we will have good science, but we also run the risk of losing public support. The public, unsure of which issues are really problems and which aren’t, will grow confused, and consequently disinterested.

And unfortunately, I have no solution to offer. Identifying problems seems to be the easy part; coming up with solutions is hard. []change-science/


 * February 4 **

One of the biggest failings I think that our school system has is that it teaches disconnectedness. Science is incredibly complex and diverse, but it is unified at the same time. Math can explain a lot of things such as gravity, and biology can explain how the human body works or trees grow, and chemistry can explain the molecular make-up of the world, and sociology can explain the complexity of cultures. None of these can explain the world by themselves, and all of these explain the world together.

But instead of focusing on this vast unity across different fields, I think our schools are segmenting the world, and creating “specialties” instead. In college, students are encouraged, I mean forced, to major in biology or focus on psychology or specialize in something. And in high-school, where every class is taught by a different teacher, the material seems disassociated from itself. We learn a concept in biology over here, and a concept in math over there, without ever learning how the two may correspond.

Creativity is essentially making connections between things that normally wouldn’t be connected. I think that in order to inspire this creativity, we need to encourage students to start making connections between subjects. And this creativity will help them come up with solutions to problems, including renewable energy, which we might never think of.

Maybe this entry is too confusing, so I’ll try to clarify it with an example. As a computer science student, I was confused by the fact that Intro to Biology was one of my course requirements. We learned about heredity and how tiny mutations changed the genetic makeup of an organism, such as a fruit-fly. I found it interesting, but I didn’t particularly care about it. Then in my Algorithms class, we learned about problems that have no solution and that, if a program was to be written to solve the problem, it would run forever. The only way we could “solve” these problems, was by coming up with a “best fit” solution. And a way of coming up with a best-fit solution was this algorithm called a “genetic algorithm” that randomly “mutated” numbers (flipped-bits) as it ran. These mutations sometimes made our best-fit solution even more best-fit (if that makes sense). And thus a concept of biology was applied to computer science. This algorithm required someone to step out of their specialty and combine it with another specialty.


 * January 31 **

Reading about a chemical spill in the Elk River, West Virginia made me wonder if maybe pollution would be better understood if people learned basic chemistry. One of the concerns about the chemical spill was wondering what reactions would occur when the crude MCHM mixed with cleaning chemicals in people’s homes. But this concern about mixing chemicals is more common than people may realize.

Especially when one is dealing with bleach, mixing common cleaning chemicals can result in toxic fumes. If people could understand the dangers of even simple chemicals around the house, then two things might change. First, people would be less likely to want to use potentially harmful chemicals in cleaning. And second, this people may begin to care more about the chemicals that companies or neighbors are dumping into the environment. []