Ecological Literacy

A key volume for anyone engages in education for sustainability. In his preface, Fritjof Capra points out that the systemic understanding of life emerging from science is based on three fundamental insights: the web of life, the cycles of nature and the flow of energy. The classroom is the school garden - a point increasingly recognised as valuable by educational authorities and which helps forge an emotional bond with nature which is not simply an intellectual understanding. There are four sections: vision, tradition/place, relationship and action. Wendell Berry contributes an essay called 'Solving for Pattern' in which he shows the irony of agricultural methods that destroy first the health of the soil and then that of human communities. The action section contains practical examples like schemes to change school lunches. I remember over 20 years ago visiting Satish Kumar's small school where they grew their own food, baked their own bread and cooked their own lunch - ecoliteracy in action.