Ecological literacy : educating our children for a sustainable world / edited by Michael K. Stone and Zenobia Barlow ; foreword by David W. Orr ; preface by Fritjof Capra.

Includes bibliographical references.

Vision. En'owkin : decision-making as if sustainability mattered / Jeannette C. Armstrong -- Speaking nature's language : principles for sustainability / Fritjof Capra -- Solving for pattern / Wendell Berry -- The power of words / Ernest Callenbach -- Values / Ernest Callenbach -- Fast-food values and slow food values / Alice Waters -- The slow school : an idea whose time has come? / Maurice Holt.

Tradition/place. Indian pedagogy : a look at traditional California Indian teaching techniques / Malcolm Margolin -- Okanagan education for sustainable living : as natural as learning to walk or talk / Jeannette C. Armstrong -- Place and pedagogy / David W. Orr -- Recollection / David W. Orr -- On watershed education / Robert Hass -- Helping children fall in love with the Earth : environmental education and the arts / Pamela Michael -- Finding your own bioregion / Peter Berg.

Relationship. Revolution step-by-step : on building a climate for change / Neil Smith with Leslie Comnes -- Leadership and the learning community / Jeanne Casella with Zenobia Barlow, Sara Marcellino, and Michael K. Stone -- "It changed everything we thought we could do" : the STRAW Project / Michael K. Stone -- Raising whole children is like raising good food : beyond factory farming and factory schooling / Michael Ableman -- Meditations on an apple / Janet Brown.

Action. Dancing with systems / Donella Meadows -- The loupe's secret : looking closely, changing scale / Kerry Ruef -- Tapping the well of urban youth activism : literacy for environmental justice / Dana Lanza -- Sustainability, a new item on the lunch menu / Michael K. Stone -- Rethinking school lunch / Marilyn Briggs -- Changing schools : a systems view / Ann Evans.

Reorienting the way human beings live on the Earth and educating children to their highest capacities have much in common, say the thinkers and educators behind this groundbreaking book. Both endeavors must be viewed and pursued in the context of systems: familial, geographic, ecological, political. And our efforts to build sustainable communities cannot succeed unless future generations learn how to partner with natural systems to their mutual benefit. In other words, they must become "ecologically literate." The concept of "ecological literacy" advanced by this book's creators, the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, extends beyond the discipline of environmental education. It aims, as David W. Orr writes in his foreword, "toward a deeper transformation of the substance, process, and scope of education at all levels." The reports and essays gathered here reveal the remarkable work being conducted by the center's extensive network of partners. In one middle school, for example, culinary icon Alice Waters founded a program that not only provides students with healthy meals but teaches them to garden--and thus to study life cycles and energy flows--as part of their curriculum. Other hands-on student projects supported by the center and described in this book range from stream restoration and watershed exploration to confronting environmental justice issues at the neighborhood level. With contributions from distinguished writers and educators, such as Fritjof Capra, Wendell Berry, and Michael Ableman, Ecological Literacy marries theory and practice based on the best thinking about how the world actually works and how learning occurs. Parents and educators everywhere who are engaged in creative efforts to develop new curricula and improve children's ecological understanding will find this book to be an invaluable resource. --Publsher.

How can the education system be adjusted with ecological sustainability in mind? What can individuals do to steer such a large and complex process? We don't know for sure. As Donella Meadows points out in her essay entitled 'Dancing with Systems', "The thing to do, when you don't know, is not to bluff and not to freeze, but to learn." Readers can learn from Alice Waters ('Fast-Food Values and Slow Food Values'), Dana Lanza ('Tapping the Well of Urban Youth Activism: Literacy for Environmental Justice'), Marilyn Briggs ('Rethinking School Lunch'), and other contributors. (Miller Library Staff)