ConnectPaul Van Auken

June 3, 2013

Civic Learning and Liberal Education• They are inextricably linked

– Civic engagement is a contemporary expression of the historic liberal arts mission of preparing students for public life as citizens and leaders. It entails a commitment to enriching public discourse on significant questions, responding to the social needs of the local and global communities in which we live, cultivating effective and ethical public leaders, encouraging civic imagination and creativity, and otherwise promoting a democratic way of life in a multicultural and increasingly globalized world.

– Teaching can be said to be civically engaged to the degree that it promotes ‘civic learning’. Civic learning involves cultivating in students the intellectual and practical skills, competencies and habits of mind necessary for them to become effective citizens and civic leaders in a multicultural/multicivilizational and increasingly globalized world. At a minimum, these ‘civic competencies’ include:

• a capacity for critical thinking; • an ability to think and express oneself both rigorously and creatively; • a capacity to address the ‘big’ issues/questions confronting society and to place more specialized knowledge in a broader

historical, social, political, ethical and cultural context; • an appreciation of the challenges confronting the local and global• communities in which we live; • a willingness to address those challenges; • a capacity for responsible participation/leadership in private, associational, and public organizations and institutions; • a capacity to engage in civil discourse and deliberation; • tolerance of the differences that one encounters in a multicultural and globalizing world; • a sense of personal and social responsibility/agency; and • a capacity for life-long learning and civic leadership.

“Liberal Education for Global Citizenship: Renewing Macalester’s Traditions of Public Scholarship and Civic Learning", Andrew A Latham, 2003

Civic Learning and Liberal Education

• They are inextricably linked– “[Liberal arts and civic education are]

inextricably linked because the purpose of the liberal arts is to prepare people for responsible citizenship, and the best forms of civic engagement are intellectually challenging; they are the liberal arts in action, or the liberal arts learned and tested experientially”

• Peter Levine, director of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, February 2013 

Civic Learning and Liberal Education• They are inextricably linked

– Liberal Education for the Examined Life• To realize, as Augustine wrote of himself, that "I have become a question

for myself" allows, even presses, us to ask more than "Who am I?" Indeed, it can evoke the weightiest of questions: "Why are we here? What can we believe? What ought we to do?" In time, the realization that we not only ask but are questions helps us make sense of the call to lead an examined life, in which questioning is more than a means to an end. We cannot fill up and close the gap of freedom that is our consciousness by tossing ever more answers into it.

• If we cannot, or will not, always think about, question, reflect on, and evaluate afresh what we think we know or can do, we risk failing in attentiveness to others and to novel situations and experiences. Without reflection, when we choose to act, we may fail in judgment, in practical wisdom, and in moral response. As John Dewey wrote in Democracy and Education, "Interest in learning from all the contacts of life is the essential moral interest" (1997, 360; emphasis added).

• As educators, we should reflect together on the dangers of education that focuses on content and technique but does not also and always provide practice in the arts of thinking freely as the conscious, relational beings we are. Such an education not only fails to prepare our students (and us as educators) to lead the examined life, but may lessen our chances of moving toward the moral ideal of democracy. 

• “Identity, Liberal Learning, Democracy: Reflections”, Elizabeth Minnich, Diversity & Democracy, 2010 

Civic Learning and Liberal Education

• They are inextricably linked• Five Essential Questions

– Who am I? (knowledge of self) – Who are we? (communal/collective knowledge) – What does it feel like to be them? (empathetic

knowledge) – How do we talk with one another? (intercultural

process knowledge)– How do we improve our shared lives? (applied,

engaged knowledge)

• Source: Musil, Caryn McTighe. 2009. Civic Engagement in Higher Education. Jossey-Bass. p. 61- 63

Civic Learning and Liberal Education

• Civic learning and action can help to reinvent liberal arts education!– Reduce the influence of "propaganda serving

the interests of state ideology" on education (as in former USSR);

• Here, what is the state ideology?– New College Scorecard, students choosing civic learning

outcomes as some of least important reasons for going to college

– Enhance relevancy, integrative learning and training of generalists, and action orientation

– Apply big questions to issues that matter• “Deep thought matters when you're contemplating

what to do about things that matter”– http://www.openideo.com/open/how-might-we-increase-

the-availability-of-affordable-learning-tools-educational-for-children-in-the-developing-world/inspiration/the-world-and-the-community-as-a-framework-for-learning

Eisenstein and synthesis

• Example from Honors 175—Sustainability from the fall 2012 semester

Three Primary Environmental Sociology Paradigms

Conservative

Managerial

Radical

Theoretical tradition

Durkheim Weber Marx

Basic causal force Culture Power Class

Societal change Change must start at individual level → changes

in individual values, behavior

→ changes in collective

consciousness → changes in

societal patterns/outcome

s

Change will only result from the elites in power (government,

business) changing (laws, policies, etc.)

Change can only occur by changing

capitalism itself

Humphrey, Lewis, and Buttel 2001.

Group Discussion

• Pick an issue related to sustainability from the course that really impacts someone in the group and use the Three Primary Environmental Sociology Paradigms framework to analyze the causes and possible solutions to it.

Assumptions of HEP vs. NEP

Catton and Dunlap (important pioneers of environmental sociology) (1978)

Human Exemptionalism Paradigm

New Ecological Paradigm

1. Humans have a cultural heritage in addition to (and distinct from) their genetic inheritance and thus are quite unlike all other animal species

1. Even though humans have exceptional characteristics (culture, technology, etc.) they are but one of many species interdependently involved in the global ecosystem

2. Social and cultural factors (including technology) are the major determinants of human affairs

2. Human affairs are not only influenced by social and cultural factors but also by intricate linkages of cause, effect, and feedback in a web of nature; so, human actions have many unintended consequences

3. Social and cultural environments are the crucial contexts for human affairs and the biophysical environment is largely irrelevant

3. Humans live in and are dependent upon a finite biophysical environment that imposes potent physical and biological restraints on human affairs

4. Culture is cumulative; thus technological and social progress can continue indefinitely, making all social problems ultimately solvable (because we’re so super smart)

4. However much the inventiveness of humans or powers derived from them may seem for a while to transcend carrying capacity, ecological laws cannot be repealed (we’re not that smart)

The High Price of Materialism

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGab38pKscw

C-M-C vs. M-C-M• Bellamy-Foster:

– “Today’s vested interests are counting on this built-in process of revolutionary technological change coupled with the proverbial magic of the market to solve the environmental problem when and where this becomes necessary.”

• What other paradigm does this sound like?

– C-M-C• Pre-capitalist system of simple commodity production• Purpose of transactions is use of the commodity, which

ends the process

– M-C-M’• Is about exchange (profit) rather than use• Begins and ends with money

– But doesn’t really end because goal is accumulation of money: “capital by its nature is self-expanding value”

Commodity Fetishism• How much do you think about where the things you buy were

made and what went into making them?• Commodity fetishism:

– With the rise of a commodity-driven, market oriented society, social relations begin to be perceived as relationships between things, such as between capital and labor

• Rather than social relationships between people– The true relations are masked due to the “mystical” or “magical”

nature of the commodity. – The resulting “veil of ignorance” renders the (potentially

exploitative and destructive) relations of production invisible to those outside of them.

– If commodities (like coffee) are fetishized, then negative externalities cannot be seen by the consumer

– Peculiar to the capitalist system• In other systems, production has been an explicitly social

process

Externality• A cost or benefit that's not included in the market price of a

good because it's not included in the supply price or the demand price– i.e: A cost or benefit that's a side effect of an action or

investment, affecting people or groups of people who have not directly contributed to the investment

– Not necessarily unintended consequences• Unaccounted-for-costs (could be shifted onto others in a very

intentional way) • Can be positive or negative• Positive:

– E.g. Jobs created to produce the good resulting in more spending in community

• Negative:– E.g. Pressure of economic growth means that people and

environment get compromised in the process, through externalities like pollution

What is Sustainability?

• What is similar and different about these two images?• Which seems to better capture the concept of

sustainability?

Eisenstein and the High Price of Materialism• General reactions?• How do they connect with each other?• Relate these pieces to:

– Commodity fetishism – C-M-C vs. M-C-M economies

• Do they allude to Dr. Barnhill’s big question about the purpose of an economy?

– Commoditization and barbarism

– The 3 Primary Environmental Sociology Paradigms• How do the ideas presented here compare to the way you

have generally thought of the idea of happiness? – How might it look in reality?

• http://www.newdream.org/resources/videos/time-trade-circle

– How does it fit with our discussion of community?• Does he reduce community to an issue about commodities (gifts),

falling into the trap of the system he criticizes?

Community

Extended ITC

Community Field

Local SocietyInteraction

Landscape Land Practices

Meaning

Community Field

Community

Local Society

Interaction

Landscape

Land Practices

Meaning

Community• What does it have to do with sustainability?

Community

Community – some other perspectives• “Communities do not have to be geographically bounded; they can

represent ideologies that connect geographically and socially distinct individuals or groups” (DeChaine 2005, Feagan 2007; see Lacy 2000 for comparison). Linton, April. 2012. Fair Trade from the Ground Up, p. 103.

There are communities of place and communities of interest (which could connect online or only occasionally in person) – Flora and Flora 2012, etc.

Extended ITC take on it: People and organizations can create strong, meaningful connections with

community-like features But this may align better with concepts like social solidarity and interest groups

(just as all interactions in local social fields do not necessarily build community) Further, place-based communities may also have solidarity with one

another Likely an important goal for people who view community as key to sustainability

But community itself is a unique phenomenon that is rooted in particular places, as outlined above

The Idea of a Local Economy

• Wendell Berry: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/299/

• How does the Total Economy work?– The Story of Stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8

The Total vs. the Local Economy

• Going Big Box vs. Going Local:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCRsAG7qAdU