Deep ecology is an ecological philosophy that promotes an ecocentric lifestyle to remedy the problems of depleting resources and planetary degradation. An integral part of this ecosophy is the process of forming a metaphysical connection to the earth, referred to as self-realisation; an unfolding of the self out into nature to attain a transcendental, non-egoic state. Findings from our research indicate that secondary school students in environment clubs align with the principles of deep ecology, and show a capacity to become (...) student eco-philosophers, and they report empathy for becoming ecocentric beings. This study explores the capacity for students to engage in environmental philosophy. (shrink)

I formulate a Deweyan argument for school gardening that prepares students for a specific type of gardening activism: community gardening, or the political activity of collectively organizing, planting and tending gardens for the purposes of food security, education and community development.

This paper investigates what it may mean to re-imagine learning through aesthetic experience with reference to John Dewey’s Art as Experience. The discussion asks what learning might look like when aesthetic experience takes centre stage in the learning process. It investigates what Dewey meant by art as experience and aesthetic experience. Working with Dewey as a philosopher of reconstruction of experience, the discussion examines responses to poetic writings and communication in learning situations. In seeking to discover what poetic writing does (...) within the experience of a reader and writer it considers three specific learning situations. Firstly there is an examination of a five-year old child’s experience of shared communication through the story of Horton the Elephant. Secondly there is an account of the responses of an 11-year-old child to poetry in a 1950s classroom setting, and later reconstructions of those experiences by the child as adult. Thirdly, the paper extends to intensive writing with 12 to 13-year-old children. The focus is on the process of learning via acts of expression as aesthetic experiences. Through art as experience the child develops perceptions that recover a coherence and continuity of aesthetic experience in art as in everyday life. (shrink)

In the complex teaching paradigm constructed and celebrated in classical Greek philosophy, geometry was the gateway to knowledge. Historically, mathematics provided the generational basis of education in Western civilization. Its impact as a disciplining subject was philosophically served by Plato’s most influential metaphysical involvement with the dialectical interplay of form and content, ideas and images, and the formal, hierarchic divisions of reality. Mathematics became a key--perhaps the key--for the establishment of natural, social and intellectual hierarchies in Plato’s work, and mathematical (...) capacities became synonymous with power--the power of abstraction needed to effect and control change. It was the provenience of the academic demands, levels, and achievements celebrated as culturally Western. From ancient Athens to medieval Europe, it became the principle of interactional/hierarchic selection: Similia similibus cognoscuntur--that is, only those things alike can interact cognitively; this launched the notion that mathematical ability is the best test for objectively determining who does and who does not qualify for a social, political, and intellectual meritocracy. (shrink)