Quote of the Day

	Our senses were made for the environment, there is nothing else of which they can be aware. So the problem of environmental awareness is the general problem of sensory awareness. And if anyone wonders whether or not awareness is a problem, let him visit Los Angeles, or if he lives there, let him leave. Lack of awareness is the only explanation I can find for the Angelinos who can persist in assuring me that the smog is really not so bad on a day when I cannot help but see, smell, taste, and feel just how bad it really is. Granted they do sense the smog, but their major adaptation to it has been a lessening of sense awareness: their senses continually providing them with unpleasant reports they have learned to ignore the information. And they have taken the imaginary environment of the media as better, for it is surely more pleasant, indication of the way things really are: the smog alert sign says “moderate,” the billboards all show blue sky, the travel ad are inviting people to come for the climate, and the newspaper, telling how things really are, can still be read. A sad parallel exists in the life of most schoolrooms. Other than for the ability to read, no premium is given to acuteness of the senses. What counts is the written and spoken word. No special training is given to develop sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. These senses are considered largely irrelevant when they do not contribute to verbal communication. And the traditional classroom is usually dull enough to inhibit much sense exploration. Since the senses provide such irrelevant information, students learn to ignore them. The imaginary environment of the textbook, blackboard, bulletin board, overhead projector, and ditto sheet often presents all the important stimuli. Contact with real objects is at a minimum. This projected media environment is the center of attention in such classrooms, and success is predicated upon familiarity with it. Verbal communication is the key. The senses provide, at best, unreliable help not approved by the curriculum directors. Through such typical practices, sensory capabilities are given no help and enough discouragement for anyone. The environment quite easily becomes the printed page, the earphone, the TV screen, the movie. They all describe the real world, which we lose the ability to sense for ourselves. (Unsettling as it is, I am afraid that lack of awareness and reliance on verbal media lie at the heart of the “success” of the Earth Day “revolution.”) As long as environmental problems can be kept in the media, there will be concern and the beginnings of action. But as the focus of the media shifts, the concern and action will shift, even though the original problems are as close at hand as ever. The Angelinos may continue to go along with their smog, if it is no longer sensed through the headlines. Insofar as any teacher fails on any day to provide an environment in which all the senses are needed, so he contributes to lack of awareness and makes toleration of environmental problems an ideal. It may sound ridiculous to ask a high-school English teacher to ensure daily that sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing are valuable and necessary components of his classes. I suspect it sounds ridiculous only because we are so far strayed from the awareness we once had, so adapted to rely on verbal communication. We are supposedly the most intelligent of animals, but our adaptability has taken a strange turn when we can watch the death of Los Angeles’s forests from smog at a mile elevation, yet continue to live at the bottom of that deadly basin. It is perhaps of interest to note that the Los Angeles schoolchildren, who have been feeling the smog in their lungs for years, had to be ordered to keep from poisoning themselves by exercise. Lack of awareness (of their own burning eyes and pain in their chests) had allowed them to continue playing in the deadly gases.
	MARK TERRY Terry, M. (1992). The Abundance of Environmental Educators. In Goodell, Carol (Ed.) The Changing Classroom. New York: Ballantine Books. pp 108-110