Environmental Literacy: Education as if the Earth Mattered

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics.

"For the most part . . . we are still educating the young as if there were no planetary emergency." Yet, continues David Orr, the environmental crisis is "first and foremost a crisis of mind, perception, and values—hence, a challenge to those institutions presuming to shape minds, perceptions, and values. It is an educational challenge." Our society must embrace and implement new ways of teaching that emphasize and prepare people for ecologically integrated lives and livelihoods. Orr describes the goals and basic tenets of ecological education, presenting five measures that are essential to transforming the modern curriculum.