Harmon+-+Midterm 


 * 1) 1. Describe ten influences on US children that shape their environmental attitudes. Reference at least four articles or videos used in our class.
 * Parents and their upbringing influences the children’s perceptions on the world. Generally, at least when they are young, children want to please their parents. They have not yet figured out how to properly question what they are taught and take most things as fact if someone trusted tells them such.
 * Teachers are one of the biggest silent influences in our lives. They are the guide to our education and they influence our thoughts about school and about life in general. In the experiment where the teacher discriminated against students based on their eye color, the students learned how to also discriminate and eventually saw the errors in their ways.
 * Media. In times where the media and social media is readily available anywhere, it plays a huge role in our children’s thoughts and actions about subjects. Without proper training in bias, they can be easily influenced negatively by polar views and may not be able to look at the broader picture.
 * Experiences/Interactions with big business. If their parents are employed by a big factory or business, it could lead to an idea that businesses do no wrong for they provide jobs and security in a place. Although some may have a good model of integrity, many do not and this could skew a child’s view.
 * Experiences/Interactions with environmental issues. If they see first-hand how a lake has changed from being clean to polluted, it would have a large impact on their perception of environmental issues.
 * Experience and time spent in nature. If a child grows up in an environment where they are separated from nature by things such as geographical location (i.e. city life) or simply because being outside was never a big thing (parents don’t go outside a lot, etc), this could largely affect how they view themselves within the ecosystem and what their role in the environment is.
 * Where they live in relation to chemical plants and the surrounding community relations with the plant. We watched a movie about the rise in childhood illnesses in a town near a plant where they processed and released benzene.
 * Level of education in the surrounding area
 * Local culture as seen by the Ladakh school. The culture of Buddhism and of using only what they had created an atmosphere that was very environmentally friendly as well as extremely sustainable.
 * Economy / Socio-economic status (SES)

2. b. Identify at least five critiques of k-12 education in the United States today, referencing at least three sources used in this course.

In the RSA short film, Changing Educational Paradigms, Robinson speaks about the __aging paradigm of education__, specifically how outdated education is. According to him, it was “conceived in the intellectual culture of the enlightenment and the economic circumstances of the nineteenth century. And since having a college degree is no longer a guarantee of a job, kids do not see the point to school as much as before. He also goes into the social aspects of education, about value of academic ability verses other abilities. Another focus of the RSA film, Changing Educational Paradigms, is the ADHD epidemic. Children are stifled in their growth as intellectuals when they __start learning for the test__, and with so much distracting media around them, we punish the students by giving them pills to concentrate on what we deem most important. [] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In this short film, Montessori Madness by Trevor Eissler, he speaks about the different paradigms of Montessori schools and public schools. In his video, he states that Public schools __assume we need incentives to learn as children__ and if we don’t make the grade, we will be dealt punishments. Montessori schools look at children as lifelong learners, allow them mixed grade classrooms and foster an open environment where students are not withheld knowledge and can continue at their own pace to learn what they are given. He believes that Montessori is the best way to teach children, and to me, rightfully so having been in a Montessori school. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In one section of Education for a Sustainable World, they focus on the social damage caused by __pitting children against each other in the form of grades__ in school. They speak about the ideal for perfection in schools, where failing is seen as a death sentence rather than a learning experience. This can be very damaging to students own self esteem as well as rewarding children who can learn to the test as opposed to those who cannot or simply needed more time to learn a particular subject.

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">3. Describe what a well-designed, culturally inflected green school building would look like in the United States, in a region of your choice. Make sure to describe how the built structure of the school would shape everyday life and learning in the building. Use the description of the Druk White Lotus School in Ladakh as a comparative reference point ( <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">[] <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">).

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">A green school in the US would be a very ambitious task. I would like to design a green school near my high school in Valley Forge, PA. Valley Forge’s natural resources are mainly trees and lime stone. There also are other rocks that are quarried, including various types of granite, most notably Pennsylvania Blue Granite. These materials along with sustainable building techniques like in Ladakh could create a green school building. The surrounding quarries would be excellent to create clay composite bricks to build the school. There are plenty of small rivers surrounding Valley Forge which would be excellent to funnel into the school to use for small things, such as hand washing and (if drilled deep enough) water-fountains. <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">The influence this school would create on the surrounding community would be immense. Although cost is a major issue, having locals build the school would be better for the community. They would see that every material could be brought in locally. Pennsylvania also used to have a huge steel industry, so using some of the leftover steel from dilapidated buildings may also be an interesting undertaking. Warehouses are just sitting there with no workers… It would be like an ultimate recycling project. The kids would be able to see the school built and understand and think “hey, that was made from this which I walk passed every day!”. It would be incredible.

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">4. Describe the premises and dimensions of project-based education, providing concrete examples of how it has been used. Conclude with a paragraph describing the pros and cons of a project-based approach in sustainability education. Reference at least four sources, starting with those provided here:

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">[] <span style="background-color: white; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">In Frontline, Kyna Doles writes about Project Based Learning or PBL in Philadelphia Public schools. Teacher Simon Hauger told the author, “Intelligence is exhibited in so many different ways,” which perfectly exemplifies the article as whole. PBL encourages students to work together and brainstorm solutions to problems applicable to real-world issues. The teachers provide the basic guidelines and framework for the students and act as a resource, but are relatively hands-off. In this type of learning, grades are not provided in the traditional sense, they are given based on performance and quality of the final work. <span style="background-color: white; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> Not many studies have been published on PBL, but two referenced in the article show promising results for students enrolled in previous schools that taught PBL. Many who do not start PBL until college are vastly underprepared for the challenges it brings to the table and many were overwhelmed trying to employ this to solve problems. <span style="background-color: white; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> In Motivating Project-Based Learning: Sustaining the Doing, Supporting the Learning, the authors focus on how to motivate students and foster cognitive engagement continuously. The text is a big advocate for PBL, although admits that it is very hard sometimes to quantify PBL. But it argues that the way to motivate students, which has been an epidemic in recent years, is to encourage PBL and give weight to what they’re learning. <span style="background-color: white; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> In the short film, Project Based Learning: Explained, it speaks about the dimensions that PBL addresses to solve real world issues. According to the video, teaching to the test is not the way to go and that knowledge should be something that lasts longer than the test. They use real-world examples, such as the example given where older students taught younger students about preventing sickness, to stimulate interest and work on three main things: critical thinking, communication and collaboration. Using these three critical skills, they can be the next generation of problem solvers and their issues actually hold value to the students as opposed to being abstract and meaningless. <span style="background-color: white; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> For the Sustainability Workshop in West Philadelphia, they approach PBL in terms of sustainability. They teach what it is and work on projects such as La Casa Verde, a LEED certified plan to provide low cost homes made from recycled shipping materials. They motivate students to think of new ways to create homes and provide energy efficiency to the homes in the project. This project also demands the students interest – many places in West Philadelphia are dilapidated and/or very poor, and providing this kind of housing, especially to those who have lost their house in a fire which are prevalent in a close quarter city, hits close to their own lives. <span style="background-color: white; color: windowtext; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;"> In sustainability education, PBL can both be truly rewarding and possibly destructive in some ways. It can be rewarding due to encouraging students to think outside of the box, they can take sustainability problems and come up with a completely different concept than previously thought. It also encourages students to communicate and gather their own information, which could be destructive. Although gathering their own information in some senses is good, some may be misleading or outright wrong. They must be taught media literacy before they continue to gather and analyze the data.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">[]

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">5. Describe the media literacy challenge in sustainability education, providing concrete examples of the kinds of media students need to be prepared to deal with. Conclude with a paragraph describing how sustainability issues add to the complexity addressed by media literacy education thus far, referencing the Media Literacy Project’s “Introduction to Media Literacy” and Project Look Sharp’s “Media Literacy Handouts.” (See schedule for Feb 26 reading, and recall the examples in //Toxic Sludge is Good For You.//) <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">Our daily lives are dominated by media. It influences our thoughts and ideas as well as can shape public opinion about any subject, from iPhones to oil companies. Many adverts are funded by big businesses who have money to spare and influence our daily consumerism model. This targeted advertising in everything that we do, from Google searching to watching television, requires a large amount of media literacy to navigate all the influences, from big business to politics. <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Arial Narrow',sans-serif;">A major point in the movie, Toxic Sludge is Good For You, is recognizing funding. Understanding funding can shed light on how bias is established on an issue. Two papers about the same thing may pose vastly different results. What makes this especially important in sustainability conversations is the political aspects of issues. If a company who wants to frack creates a groundwater foundation who supports fracking, it can cause misinformation. Knowing how to navigate these types of organizations can help promote better media literacy as well as create more genuine information to be analyzed.