Earth in Mind

Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect

Earth in Mind is a must read for anyone interested in environmental education. Orr presents the relationship between the nature of education and how the environment is treated by the very professionals that are the future. The original introduction began with a list of facts and statistics that will shake the foundation of ones belief system, to put them in the context of being ten years old and to know that things have only become worse begs one to investigate the balance of the text.

The book is a series of essays organized in four parts. The first of which deals with the problem of education with regard to the lack of environmental awareness and the problems that will persist with a new generation of efficient vandals of our biosphere. Part two delves into guiding principles for education reform, those relationships of the human condition that are being lost through an increasingly specialized education process.

After raising the issues to be addressed by education, Orr then collects a series of essays within part three that propose standards of measure for educational institutions. Accountability from the universities and their graduates is a concept worth noting as society to often rewards those that defile and exploit the biosphere. The fourth part offers up alternatives to the current direction of education, that innate part of us that draws us to nature; what E.O. Wilson calls biophilia. The concept of local knowledge and understanding our limitations is also relative to our regaining environmental awareness.

In conclusion, Orr offers that there is still hope, with a re-education and changes in current education we can realize what the problem is and begin the transformation that is within all of us.

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