Bøker av C. A. Bowers

This book is an examination of how the educational process perpetuates cultural myths contributing to the ecological crisis. In addressing the cultural and educational dimensions of the ecological crisis, the book illuminates educational issues associated with the hidden nature of culture, particularly how thought patterns formed in the past are reproduced through the metaphorical language used in the classroom. It examines why both conservative and liberal educational critics ignore the ecological crisis, and suggests that a more ecologically sustainable ideology is being formulated by such thinkers as Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, and Gregory Bateson.

Contrary to the attitudes that have been marketed and taught to us, says C. A. Bowers, the fact is that computers operate on a set of Western cultural assumptions and a market economy that drives consumption. Our indoctrination includes the view of global computing innovations as inevitable and on a par with social progress.

In this volume C.A. (Chet) Bowers, whose pioneering work on education and environmental and sustainability issues is widely recognized and respected around the world, brings together a carefully curated selection of his seminal work on these concerns and educational reforms to address the them.

This work explains how technological and progressive programmes of educational reform operate on deep cultural assumptions that came out of the Enlightenment and led to the Industrial Revolution.

The enclosure of the cultural and environmental commons has been going on for hundreds of years, privatizing what was previously available to all members of the community. Recently, however, the process of enclosure has been accelerated by the spread of economic globalization. This timely book champions the cultural and environmental commons as sites of resistance to this current trend, and explains the nature of educational reforms that promote ecological sustainability, conserving of cultural and linguistic diversity, local democracy, and greater community self-sufficiency. Revitalizing the Commons will be of interest to scholars of environmental studies, education, and community development alike.