Midterm+Ruiqi 

 Ruiqi Tan Midterm Essay Questions Describe the arguments made in the articles by Orr, Lakoff, and Ridley/Low about ways environmental sustainability should be framed (and justified)? Explain which arguments you find compelling, and why, then describe one activity for k-12 students would effectively frame environmental sustainability in a way suggested by one of these authors.

Both of the essay’s arguments are based on describing how framing the worlds can change the effect in how people react to a certain issue, more specifically the Environmental issue. Both authors have the same aspect that environmental sustainability is a big issue to be focused not only by us, but also by all later generations. Examples of ways of framing words for government speeches and news articles are given in both papers. The one fact they both pointed out is that words should not make the issue more complicated and harder to understand, smaller words should be used so that people can easily release the importance and impact of such issues. In Orr’s article, he used the example of former president Abraham Lincoln as ‘Lincoln was a relentless logician but always spoke with vernacular eloquence in words that could be plainly understood by everyone’. He pointed out that unnecessary complication and contentiousness should be avoid. In Low and Ridley’s paper also said the simple language should be used instead of technological terms. Orr’s paper is strongly related to the strategies of Lincoln’s speeches about civil right movements and how that can be a great lesson to framing environment issue news. Orr focused more on framing environment sustainability in the right way and make people believe in the possibility that someday the issue might be solved, rather than giving possible ways to deal with the problems directly. Ridley and Low discusses the concept of framing environmental sustainability in multiple directions. They relate environment issues with economics, religion, politics, etc. They gave ways like selling pollution permits so that responsibilities of protecting the air can be every citizens. Ridley and Low gave us the idea that environment issues should not be manipulate by personal and political believes, it is a big problem that every generation needs to put efforts in in order to make improvements. So thats why I prefer Ridley and Low’s point of view than Orrs. Debate can be a good activity for student to understand the importance of framing their own words and the ways to make others agree with them. Class can be divided into two groups. With the mutual goal of making environment improvements, for example advocate local grown food instead of importing food from other countries. They need to make speeches to people the make people believe in what they are doing is right and better than what the other group is trying to do. And last the group with more votes wins.

2. Watch (Michigan State University's) Principles of Place-Based Education(20 minutes) list three key points then explain how place-based education is said to differ from environmental education, and how it realizes John Dewey's arguments about what education should accomplish.

Place-based education encourages teachers and students to use the school yard, community, public lands, and other special places as resources, turning communities into classrooms. It immerses students in local heritage, culture, landscapes, opportunities, and experiences as a foundation for the study of language arts, mathematics,social studies, science, and other subjects. I the video it introduced place-based education as a new alternative way of learning. Instead of sitting in a closed environment with teachers delivering materials manually, place-based education encourage students of exploring the local environment voluntarily and learning with hands on exercise. Place-based education is also believed to make students to become more responsible citizens, make them more engaged and gain appreciation to local community and environment. Another special point of place based education is that as it does not have fixed lists of materials to teach, no matter what the economical statue and resources the school. all can adopt it. As environment resources are gifted by nature, place based education helped students in less advantage community to have more learning resources. Place based encourage self-educating, help student develop a interest of learning through hands on experiences. As the idea of progressive education introduced by John Dewey, place based education also relates reality knowledges with interacting experiences. Dewey’s education view is that teachers and students must learn together. Place-based education breaks the rule of teachers “dominantly” lead the progress of the classroom, with more of a hands on exercises than listening, it gives the opportunity for equal voice among all participants in the learning experience. In Dewey’s point of view, the role of the teacher in this setting would be to serve more as a facilitator than an instructor. As the class room setting way of learning, it focused more on teaching a single “easy” way of problem-solving for students than letting students promote their interests and creating their own way of learning and solving problems. If the learning environment changed to place-based learning, with hands on experiences students are encouraged to learn under their own pace. Both problems and solutions will be found by the students, instead of teacher handing out problem sets and students finish those with the method that the teacher told them to.

3. Describe the 2013 prize-winning TedTalk by Sugata Mitra, and the child-centered "SOLE" methods he advocates. The propose a SOLE (self-organizing learning environment) for sustainability education.

The main focus of Sugara Mitra’s TED speech is about if the study environment is still fitted for learning needs as it is hundreds years ago, and if it promote the showing of students’ soles instead of destroying them. In Mitra’s speech, it described the education system now a days as the production of the empire century, as people needed survival skills and mass-product abilities more than creativities. Education model today still works like a factory as teachers input knowledges manually into students head without letting students develop a interest of learning and self-educating skills. This way of teaching might be needed decades ago, it is very outdated now a days. Today’s society moves in a mega fast speed, no one know what kind of new things and jobs will happen in the next 5 years, the spirit of discovery and problem solving are more needs than listening to what teachers tells you to remember and just do so. Mitra believe that the relationship between students and teachers should be a guiding situation instead of “dominating”. It is not necessary to have highly educated teachers to get the best learning as so many learning materials can be found with a arm length, what schools need more is technologies like computers to make learning possible as the moment the student asking for an answer. The education system that Mitra is promoting is called SOLEs, self organized learning environments, where group discussions form beside a computer with students discover the answer only by searching it themselves. This child-centered learning technique puts teachers in the background of the classroom instead of in the center of the attention. This school in cloud essentially can make learning happen anywhere. SOLEs not only helps student learn knowledges, but also build team work skills; creativity; self-organizing; data finding skill and so much more. Those capabilities are more useful for todays society than knowing text book materials. SOLEs make education happen inside the students, it focused more on the way of getting to the solutions instead of the solutions themselves. SOLEs makes the class more like a skills workshop instead of teachers speaking and students listening place. With knowing how to learn and why to learn, the purpose of going to school is achieved because the students can find the problem, resource for the problem, and finally solve the problem all by themselves. SOLEs is needed for sustainability education, because now a days, everyone knows pollutions are bad for the environment and recycle help improve our life, but not everyone knows the reason behind those advocations. If the students can research those environmental issues and find out solutions of improvement themselves, they can understand better and be more likely to actually of them.

4. Describe the design and purpose behind the design of the The Druk White Lotus School (Ladakh, India) (25 minute film) then describe what the built features and daily life within a "culturally inflected" green school building in the United States would be like (drawing inspiration from the Druk White Lotus School). The Druk White Lotus School is located in Shey, Ladakh, in northern India. The principle of the school is designed in a way that both embraced Buddhist traditions and western modern cultures. As the location of the school is at very high altitude with a shortage of resources, the construction of the school buildings is as sustainable as possible with mainly local resources. Though high-end technologies and expensive materials cannot be found in the school, environment sustainability and usage of physics law are put into the design of the buildings so that kids and teachers there can be as comfortable as if they are in a heated room. Solar powers are used to heat up the classroom by basically collecting heat of the sunshine from the window; Water treatment perform by just using the law of lower density of heated water. Children living in the school can get benefits from the building technique designs, but those designs will not work if they do not help to maintain them. This idea makes kids understand that they are part of something greater than themselves as their action not only influence themselves but others. The building structures all revolve around the studying of Buddhism. Symbols of Buddhist can be found all around the school, school building is designed to mimic the design of a temple. The Druk Whit Lotus School not only teaches western materials to the students but also made sure that the kids there know their own cultures their own foundations. This is a very important point, as knowing who you are is the only way to make yourself better. Environmentally sustainable schools are much needed the United States as in Ladakh. As environmental issues emerge in a crazy way, facilities like schools need to be built in a way that recourse can be used in its biggest capability. Also with a sustainable building structure, lots of money can be saved from things like electricity and water and that money can go towards improving educations. The way of building a sustainable school in the US should be much different in its building materials but obtain the same principle as in Ladakh. As the United States have more resources and professional engineers, the buildings can be built more intellectualized. The most difficult part of building a sustainable school in the US is not its building structure, it is making environmentally friendly and improving activities a daily life for students and teachers. As the US is not as a harsh environment as Ladakh, resources are not things that people worry about initiatively. People all know what recycle, local garden, solar energy, etc are, but what the green school needs to teach is the reason behind those green choice and make students understand why those sustainable lifestyles are must have for the future. The idea like Druk White Lotus School should be used in every school in the world, but how to run the school and what the teaching outcomes are focused on should be vary in places. 5. Explain how Annie Leonard argues that we "aren't broke," (8 minutes) and should have plenty of money for public education in the United States, then list four ways you would increase funding for public education in the United States (if you were in charge of everything).

In the short video, Annie Leonard pointed out that the tax that we pay does not bring the outcome that we imagined. Government claim that they are broke when we still pay significant amount of our income as tax. When we wish public system such as Schools and hospital can be improved for better life, those are the funds that have been cut off first as government claims they don't have money left. In this video, Annie pointed out what exactly is taking our money that is suppose to make our life better, and what can we do to make that situation stop. “we pay taxes so that a bette future can be built which we are unable to build on our own.”. This is the fundamental reason that makes the citizens willing to give a big portion of their paycheck to the government. We wish that more schools can be built so our children can have a better future; more hospital can be built that when we need help, we have a place to go; EPA can be supported so that earth can still be our home in a thousand years. But the reality is, those things that make us happier are the things that government chose to cut. Those dinosaur economy as Annie Leonard said in the video is the reason behind this situation. Money goes to things like military, cleaning up chemical spills, building commercial farms, etc. Those thing are not what people need and can even harm us. Government chose to give money to those corporations is because as those companies have more money, they can fund elections which candidates needs. This is a big negative going loop, as a citizen we should be the one to control that and stop that from destroying the future. Education should be put as the priority, as proved by the history. If I am in charge, school should be the one which gets the biggest portion of the taxes income, not military. Military keeps us safe from attacks, but it also brings tragic and life threats. For the money to school, most of them should be invest in its technologies. With a more sustainable building structures and efficient learning materials, money can be saved along the way of operating the school. Companies using renewable energies and sustainable materials will also be encouraged. I will also encourage corporations between schools and industries so that students can have more hands on experiences with the real world leading technologies besides what the textbooks told them. In my opinion, the amount of education funds should not equal to the economic statue of that community. Every child should have the equal opportunities of getting the education they wants, everyone have the right to learn as much as they want to learn. Money should not be a barrier between knowledges and kids, it should be a helping hand to raise kids up for a better future.