Revitalizing the Commons: Cultural and Educational Sites of Resistance and Affirmation

The enclosure of the cultural and environmental commons has been going on for hundreds of years, privatizing what was previously available to all members of the community. Recently, however, the process of enclosure has been accelerated by the spread of economic globalization. This timely book champions the cultural and environmental commons as sites of resistance to this current trend, and explains the nature of educational reforms that promote ecological sustainability, conserving of cultural and linguistic diversity, local democracy, and greater community self-sufficiency. Revitalizing the Commons will be of interest to scholars of environmental studies, education, and community development alike.

Bowers, C.A

Reference

Lexington Books

This book champions the cultural and environmental commons as sites of resistance to the current trend of economic globalization, and explains the nature of educational reforms that promote ecological sustainability, conserving of cultural and linguistic diversity, local democracy, and greater community selfsufficiency.

Mindful Conservatism: Re-thinking the Ideological and Educational Basis of an Ecologically Sustainable Future

Mindful Conservatism examines how the misuse of our political vocabulary contributes to governmental, corporate, and educational policies that degrade the Earth's natural systems, and suggests ways to overcome this linguistic confusion to help recognize the fundamental connections between communities, sustainability, and the conservation of the world's diverse cultures.

Science & Math

Nature & Ecology

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Mindful Conservatism examines how the misuse of our political vocabulary contributes to governmental, corporate, and educational policies that degrade the Earth's natural systems, and suggests ways to overcome this linguistic confusion to help recognize the fundamental connections between communities, sustainability, and the conservation of the world's diverse cultures.

Earth Sciences

Exposes the faulty assumptions that underlie modern education in the areas of moral education, creativity, and intelligence, showing how these assumptions must be changed in order to produce an ecologically sustainable culture. This book is a wake-up call for environmentalists who need to consider how current educational ideals and practices undermine efforts to create a more sustainable future. It is also a wake-up call for educators who continue to base their reform efforts on the primacy of the individual, while ignoring the fact that the individual is nested in culture, and culture is nested in (and thus dependent upon) natural ecosystems. Bowers argues that the modern way of understanding moral education, creativity, intelligence, and the role of direct experience in the learning process cannot be supported by evidence from such fields as anthropology, cultural linguistics, and the sociology of knowledge.

Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture: Rethinking Moral Education, Creativity, Intelligence, and Other Modern Orthodoxies (Suny Environmental Public Policy)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

State University of New York Press

Exposes the faulty assumptions that underlie modern education in the areas of moral education, creativity, and intelligence, showing how these assumptions must be changed in order to produce an ecologically sustainable culture. This book is a wake-up call for environmentalists who need to consider how current educational ideals and practices undermine efforts to create a more sustainable future. It is also a wake-up call for educators who continue to base their reform efforts on the primacy of the individual, while ignoring the fact that the individual is nested in culture, and culture is nested in (and thus dependent upon) natural ecosystems. Bowers argues that the modern way of understanding moral education, creativity, intelligence, and the role of direct experience in the learning process cannot be supported by evidence from such fields as anthropology, cultural linguistics, and the sociology of knowledge.

Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture: Rethinking Moral Education, Creativity, Intelligence, and Other Modern Orthodoxies (Suny Series, Environmental Public Policy) (Suny Series I)

The Culture of Denial: Why the Environmental Movement Needs a Strategy for Reforming Universities and Public Schools (Suny Series in Environmental Public Policy)

Argues that environmentalists must expand their political involvement to include the reform of public schools and universities, and that education must be revamped to support ecologically sustainable paths for society.

Religion & Spirituality

Religious Studies

The authors argue that an industrial model of teaching is outdated in a culture that is now realizing fundamental changes in the areas of inquiry, the natural sciences and social dynamics. Conditions in the society in which a person lives help to shape how that person uses language, interacts socially and perceives the world and other people. Teachers and teachers' supervisors must be aware that it is not necessarily what information they present, but how they present it that determines whether their audience internalizes it. The authors of this book propose a culturally responsive model of teaching - one that attends to the influences of a person's "primary" culture - in which the classroom is seen as an ecology of language and cultural patterns. While emphasizing the immediate, practical applications of this model in the classroom, the authors also focus on such new areas of awareness in the teacher as observing students' behaviour and performance through culturally attuned eyes, and striking a balance between instructors' authority and solidarity with students. The book concludes with 11 sets of guidelines to help the educator recognize and respond to cultural stereotypes in the teacher and in the student. These guides list the important points to be considered and include helpful examples of patterns that appear in the classroom. Eight of the guides focus on specific aspects of the mental and social ecology of the classroom, including nonverbal communication, metaphor, gender bias, student participation, and other sensitive areas of teaching diverse students. Two guides address subject areas - science and mathematics - that have typically (and mistakenly) been considered free of cultural bias by virtue of their being more content-oriented. Also included is an analysis of the structure of the lesson that provides a more gestalt view of teaching. All pre- and in-service teachers and supervisors/educators of these individuals, should benefit from the model this book encourages.

Culturally Responsive Teaching and Supervision: A Handbook for Staff Development

Education & Teaching

Bowers, Chet A.

Flinders, David J.

Schools & Teaching

Teachers College Pr

Do computers foster cultural diversity? Ecological sustainability? In our age of high-tech euphoria we seem content to leave tough questions like these to the experts. That dangerous inclination is at the heart of this important examination of the commercial and educational trends that have left us so uncritically optimistic about global computing.
Contrary to the attitudes that have been marketed and taught to us, says C. A. Bowers, the fact is that computers operate on a set of Western cultural assumptions and a market economy that drives consumption. Our indoctrination includes the view of global computing innovations as inevitable and on a par with social progress―a perspective dismayingly suggestive of the mindset that engendered the vast cultural and ecological disruptions of the industrial revolution and world colonialism.
In Let Them Eat Data Bowers discusses important issues that have fallen into the gap between our perceptions and the realities of global computing, including the misuse of the theory of evolution to justify and legitimate the global spread of computers, and the ecological and cultural implications of unmooring knowledge from its local contexts as it is digitized, commodified, and packaged for global consumption. He also suggests ways that educators can help us think more critically about technology.
Let Them Eat Data is essential reading if we are to begin democratizing technological decisions, conserving true cultural diversity and intergenerational forms of knowledge, and living within the limits and possibilities of the earth’s natural systems.

Let Them Eat Data: How Computers Affect Education, Cultural Diversity, and the Prospects of Ecological Sustainability

Philosophy

University of Georgia Press

We believe in social justice. We support educational reform. Yet unless we reframe our approaches to both, says C. A. Bowers, the social justice attained through educational reform will only lead to more intractable forms of consumerism and further impoverishment of our communities. In Educating for Eco-Justice and Community Bowers outlines a strategy for educational reform that confronts the rapid degradation of our ecosystems by renewing the face-to-face, intergenerational traditions that can serve as alternatives to our hyper-consumerist, technology-driven worldview. Bowers explains how current technological and progressive programs of educational reform operate on deep cultural assumptions that came out of the Enlightenment and led to the Industrial Revolution. These beliefs frame our relationship with nature in adversarial terms, view progress as inevitable, and elevate the individual over community, expertise over intergenerational knowledge, and profit over reciprocity. By making eco-justice a priority of educational reform, we can begin to:democratize developments in science and technology in ways that eliminate eco-racism;reverse the global processes that are worsening the economic and political inequities between the hemispheres;expose the cultural forces that turn aspects of daily life―from education and entertainment to work and leisure―into market-dependent relationships;uplift knowledge and traditions of intergenerationally connected communities; anddevelop a sense of moral responsibility for the long-term consequences of our excessive material demands. In the tradition of Wendell Berry, David Orr, and Kirkpatrick Sale, Bowers thinks about our place in the natural world and the current economies to show how we can reform education and create a less consumer-driven society.

Educating for Eco-Justice and Community

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bowers, C.A. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Bowers, C.A

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bowers, C.A. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Revitalizing the Commons: Cultural and Educational Sites of Resistance and Affirmation

Revitalizing the Commons: Cultural and Educational Sites of Resistance and Affirmation

Mindful Conservatism: Re-thinking the Ideological and Educational Basis of an Ecologically Sustainable Future

Mindful Conservatism: Re-thinking the Ideological and Educational Basis of an Ecologically Sustainable Future

Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture: Rethinking Moral Education, Creativity, Intelligence, and Other Modern Orthodoxies (Suny Environmental Public Policy)

Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture: Rethinking Moral Education, Creativity, Intelligence, and Other Modern Orthodoxies (Suny Series, Environmental Public Policy) (Suny Series I)

The Culture of Denial: Why the Environmental Movement Needs a Strategy for Reforming Universities and Public Schools (Suny Series in Environmental Public Policy)

Culturally Responsive Teaching and Supervision: A Handbook for Staff Development

Let Them Eat Data: How Computers Affect Education, Cultural Diversity, and the Prospects of Ecological Sustainability

Educating for Eco-Justice and Community