ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IS DIFFERENT THAN TRADITIONAL, DISCIPLINARY PROGRAMS

The kind of college education most of us had at Oberlin took place in classrooms, practice rooms, and laboratories supplemented with an occasional field trip that were all grounded in a traditional discipline. Some courses like biochemistry introduced disciplinary cross-talk, but holistic approaches were/are the exception because faculty were/are not encouraged to think in such terms and, by and large, they know their discipline well but not its broader relations with the whole. We all understand what it takes to provide this traditional pattern of education.

Environmental education is different. A look at the curriculum of environmental studies illustrates the uniqueness of environmental education and why colleges are ill equipped to provide the type of programs our culture requires if their graduates are to successfully meet the challenges of the coming decades. The curriculum as listed in the 2001-2002 Course Catalog.

Major must take six courses totaling at least 18 hours in Social Sciences and Humanities consisting of the following:

• Environmental Studies 101 (Environment and Society) is required of all majors. ...
• A total of five additional courses in the Social Sciences and Humanities to be chosen from the following list. ENVS 208 (Environmental Policy) OR ENVS 231 (Environmental Economics) MUST be one of the five, and no more than two of the five courses may be cross-referenced with a single department or program. ...
• At least one Humanities course is highly recommended. (list of acceptable courses in Economics, Environmental Studies, History, Sociology, Art, Emerging Arts, English, Philosophy, and Russian) ...
  Majors must take at least 15 hours of course work in the Natural Sciences from the following list:
• Biology 120, either Geology 160 or 162, and either Chemistry 101, 102, 103 or 151 MUST be included among these 15 hours.
• The balance of the 15 hours in natural sciences must be selected from courses in the Biology, Chemistry, Geology, and/or Physics Departments, and they must EITHER count towards one of those majors OR be cross-referenced with Environmental Studies. (list of acceptable courses in Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Studies, Geology, Physics) ...
• Majors must take ONE course in statistics or research methods selected from the following..."
  

This quick sketch of the curriculum indicates the breadth of disciplines one needs to embrace if one is to attempt to comprehend environmental issues, even incompletely at a simplistic level. This is the case because the biophysical world in which human activities are imbedded is not organized in discrete disciplines. Rather, the human world and its biophysical base comprise a complex adaptive system of the highest order where all elements are interdigitated and linked, directly or indirectly, in myriad ways with all other elements. And unpredictable emergent properties appear, as elements combine, to form systems and these systems interact to create higher orders of complexity. The complexity of environmental studies is appealing because it mirrors the "real" world. Yet, this complexity is an unparalleled intellectual and practical challenge because fundamental laws that would permit prediction, or at least understanding, are elusive, if existent, in this interdisciplinary field.

The reductionism approach of breaking the whole into parts, subparts, etc. has been fantastically successful in many respects, but the overwhelming environmental problems of human population and consumption growth, equity, climate change, biodiversity loss, social justice, and pollution require systems analysis and holistic understanding. Colleges and universities are organized to, and effective at, providing disciplinary education. They are even able in some cases to support multidisciplinary endeavors — disciplines standing side by side and informing each other. They are only beginning to imagine interdisciplinary programs — disciplines overlapping into spaces where emergent properties create understandings and knowledge of a new kind. Environmental education is the exemplar of interdisciplinary education.