Thoughts on Education, the Training of Arctic Scientists and Arctic Research - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 319

Christian background, it was a philosophy that can be traced back to an interpretation or
translation of the first chapter of Genesis (verse 26) and it has served us well. I learned ab-
solutely nothing to challenge this paradigm at any of my schools. No teacher suggested that
we, along with all biota, live in an interrelated state of balance that also includes the geo-
physical world. It was a worldview far removed from that of many other societies where
all individuals lived more closely with their environment. Is it any wonder that the people
of my generation have such difficulty in relating the limits of sustainability of our planet's
environment to our personal goals of wealth generation?
An alternative view of humankind's relationship to its environment was made famous
by the words attributed to Chief Si'ahl (Seattle) in a letter to the U.S. government in the
early nineteenth century: “Will you teach your children what we have taught our children?
That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.”
In the mid-1970s, school curricula at junior and high school levels began to slowly
address these shortcomings. However, the impact varied greatly from school to school de-
pending in large part on whether individual teachers had been prepared to donate their own
time to extracurricular activities. Of course, I have no data, but as I mentioned in the first
chapter , I cannot believe that the children enriched by these teachers have not questioned
the old exploitation paradigm into their adult lives. It must be far easier for them to absorb,
for example, ideas on sustainable economics and the relationship between our lifestyle and
the looming spectres of global warming and population growth.
If our minds are indeed moulded in our childhood and youth (and neuroscience tells
us that they are), then our long-term future depends on the worldview of children now still
in school. In the meantime, we continue to make decisions that compound the problems to
be faced by these children in their adult lives. We are severely reducing the options that
will be available to them when they are forced by circumstances to address the need for
global sustainability. It is unconscionable that everything is not done to provide them with
an education to prepare them for the task ahead.
2. Adult education : Adult education is crucial if we have any hopes of seeing the concept
ofsustainability beingpromotedbyourpresent-day electorate. Theultimate long-termgoal