Towards Eco-Predoggy

By starting his essay off by comparing post-WWII social transformations to what we are going through today Richard Kahn is able to grab the reader’s attention and make his arguments seem very relevant. Even though it seems like he sometimes gets a little extreme with his opinions for the most part he makes good points, and the world would be in a better place if we took some of his ideas into consideration. After reading Kahn’s essay there are three words that have the potential to summarize the main points that he made: ecopedagogy, pedagogy, and ecology.

According to practicingfreedom.org “ecopedagogy is a discourse, a movement, and an approach to education that has emerged from leftist educators in Central and South America including Paulo Freire, Moacir Gadotti and Leonardo Boff that seeks to re-educate “planetary citizens” to care for, respect and take action for all life” which is the main idea that Kahn is trying to get his readers to buy into. If more people would practice this idea in everyday life as a whole we would do much less damage to the planet that we live on.

As defined by http://www.bcb.uwc.ac.za “ecology is the scientific study of interactions of organisms with one another and with the physical and chemical environment”. Kahn makes a valid point on this topic when he states that “a threat to either the organism or its environment is a movement towards the ecology of death” because if you harm an organism’s environment you are in turn harming the organism itself.  

Pedagogy refers to the method of which something is taught; in his essay Kahn states that “Just as there is now a socio-ecological crisis of serious proportions, there is also a crisis in environmental education over what must be done about it” and continues on to talk about the way things have been, are, and possibly should be taught in the future. I would consider this the most important topic that Kahn covered in the entire essay. It doesn’t matter if there are a few people who know what needs to be done if they do not successfully convey their knowledge to enough people then nothing will be accomplished. And on that same note if people are not taught about something in the proper manner they will either not be convinced that they to take action or they will not know how to take action.

Through all of his examples and explanations Kahn made a good case for something that he believes strongly in which is changing our ways to preserve the environment. In the end it is clear that weather or not you agree with everything he states the issues he talks about are real and they do need to be dealt with. The first step to dealing with our problems is to make everyone aware that there is a problem and educated them on how to fix it.