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A Review of A People's Curriculum for the Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis Edited by Bill Bigelow & Tim Swinehart
Reviewed by Steven P. James
Among the many responsibilities of an educator is to be a curator of knowledge. With limited time and resources, teachers must choose both what content to include in their classes and how best to represent differing perspectives. The complexity of this task is often compounded by administrative and societal pressure to be balanced and neutral in discussions of multiple viewpoints. However, such pressure can lead to ethical conflicts when a perspective runs counter to the preponderance of data and evidence, and even more so when it necessitates a disregard toward the injustices of disadvantaged populations. The current environmental crisis which plagues the modern world is one such example of this conflict, where the pressure to represent all sides may oppose an educator's professional responsibility to present students with the most accurate facts and evidence.
In the book A People's Curriculum for the Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis (Bigelow & Swinehart, 2014), this educational conflict of interest is boldly addressed through a series of passionately themed essays, song lyrics, class activities, and other preSteven sentations which highlight not just climate change itself, but the social and political forces which have led the world to its current state. This broader perspective gives the text value for courses in environmental science as well as history, social studies, and the humanities at large. However, because of this sociopolitical perspective the book directly challenges the traditional notion of presenting a balance of viewpoints to students.
In the introduction, Bigelow and Swinehart declare their social perspective to the reader. They openly admit that the essays in the book are heavily politicized in a way which "advocate[s] not so much [for] teaching about fossil fuels as teaching against fossil fuels-and against a system that privatizes decisions on which the future depends" (p. x). However, they deny that this perspective is a biased one. They define bias as an "unwillingness to examine or express one's own premises" (p. x), which they contend is an issue that infects mainstream textbooks and what necessitated the creation of A People's Curriculum for the Earth. This...