Alexander G. Busigin. «Desmoecology:
theory of education for susteinable
development». 2003.
- 200 p.
The
book presents a new education and research field – desmoecology – dealing
with the
interrelation between social, economic, environmental aspects of the ecological
problem. The aim of it is to develop conceptual and social types of intellect of
a personality with ecology-centered thinking.
Noospheric
norms of human behaviour are developed which serve as methodological basis of
desmoecology, together with human values and social and environmental
responsibility.
Problems
of training broad specialists – desmoecologists- and college staff in the
field are discussed.
The
book is intended for researchers and practitioners in the field of ecology and
for teachers and students.
Contents
Author’s
Preface
What
is this book about
INTRODUCTION.
Desmoecological thesaurus
Part
I. Theory of Desmoecology
Chapter
I. Global Environmental Crisis as the main descriptor of desmoecological
thesaurus
1.1. Structure
and essence of Global Environmental Crisis
1.2. Gnosiological,
social and economic causes of Global Environmental Crisis
1.3. Definition
of Global Environmental Crisis
Chapter
2. Noospheric norms of human behaviour and social and environmental
responsibility as methodological basis of contemporary education theory
2.1.
Human values, their essence and structure
2.2.
Ecological and social responsibility as provision for maintaining the human
values homeostasis. Structure and content of this responsibility, manifestation
of its main components.
2.3.
Noospheric norms of human behaviour as dominant laws
2.4.
Other descriptors of desmoecological thesaurus
2.5.
Axioms of desmoecology
Part
2. Practice of desmoecology
Chapter
3. What must a desmoecologist know?
3.1.
What does “broad specialist” mean?
3.2.
Personal characteristics of a desmoecologist. The formula of genius.
3.3.
Job descriptions and the amount of knowledge of the first generation
desmoecologist
3.4.
Core knowledge. Curriculum cycles.
3.5.
Curriculum development of Desmoecology
Chapter
4. How to educate and train desmoecologists.
4.1.
The main contradiction of University traditional didactics.
4.2.
Influence of knowledge criteria on the intellectual growth of a desmoecologist.
“Ways of thinking” criteria.
4.3.
Methodology and methods of organizing extra-curricular activities. The unified
curriculum.
4.4.
Developing integrated structural and conceptual model of enhancing
social and environmental responsibility.
4.5.
Broadening educational space of
various types of universities
4.6.
Training specialists – Ph.D in environment protection teaching
Conclusions
“You
may go wherever you wish, but if you go you must be responsible for your
choice” (C. Castaneda).
“The
main thing is to teach people how to think” (B.Brecht)
My
book is intended for those who think about protecting Nature and saving oneself
in it. Environments specialists’ reports have shown that in spite of large
capital investments, in spite of industrial recession, ecological situation is
deteriorating year in and year out.
For
25 years mankind has been concerned about life preservation of its population.
The most important collective attempts to approach this problem were the UNO
conferences on environment protection (Stockholm, 1972) and environment and
development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992). The latter was really a global forum, where
178 states, 114 heads of states and governments,
1600 non-government organizations. At the same time
Rio hosted a global forum on environmental problems involving nine
thousand organizations, 29 thousand participants, 450 thousand guests and
holding over a thousand sessions.
And
what is the result?
According
to well-known experts V.I.
Danilov-Danilyan and K.S. Losev “ both the global conferences in Stockholm and
Rio de Janeiro were a failure…, not a single aim was achieved…”.
Perhaps
there is something wrong in what we are doing?
Thus,
the main objective of this book is to involve the readers into thinking over one
of the eternal Russian problems – what is to be done? What is to be done when
in spite of all economic, political and technical measures the environmental
crisis is becoming overwhelming, bordering on ecological catastrophe? And what
is to be done to promote instrumental activities targeted at saving both the
environment and humankind?
It
turns out that the problem is not so much technological as mental. Our
everyday life is made from billions of men’s actions; if all these are
wrong and irresponsible, no capital investments would remedy the consequences.
The
famous Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky proved scientifically that the only
way of survival is to create noosphere, the sphere of
Reason. In other words, it essential to first change the human mentality
and after that (or at the same time) to start solving the technological part of
environmental crisis, because these two aspects are inseparable.
But
this sphere of Reason needs building up. That is, it is necessary to develop a
new professional school of environmental
thinking. This thinking has as its priorities life
and health and not power, or money, or information.
The
task of improving human mentality and making it environment-conscious is the
most demanding one. Only once mankind faced the same grandiose problem – to
adjust its image of the world from geocentric to heliocentric
after Copernicus discovery. It took mankind over 100 years to realize
that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and not otherwise. However, the
environmental crisis is avalanching, and we have not a hundred years to understand gradually that life and health are
more valuable than money.
Why
is it so difficult to solve this two-facet problem – to change the mentality
and to escape the environmental crisis? And why can’t it be solved by
developing and implementing the current ecological
and educational programs?
The
interaction of humankind and biosphere demands not only studying various aspects
of human influence on the environment – it requires the
development of a system allowing for interrelation of factors which
determines the complexity of the problem. Political, economic, social and other
problems are connected with arborvitae
stability, climate evolution, pollution, new raw materials base, etc.
That is why a new general view of the problem is required, allowing for
uniting all the research in these fields into a unified system together with
building up a hierarchy of models. What is required is the research based on
aggregate models of higher level which describe
planetary social and ecological processes.
The
trouble is that the existing specialists on environment protection hardly
understand the processes taking place, because due to differentiation of
knowledge, the existing specialists got used to viewing every event separately
and to attributing to it a single cause. But every event in biosphere is also a
cause and reason: animal waste products become food for soil bacteria, plants
depend on bacterial vital activity, animals feed on plants. According to Barry
Commoner, it is difficult to find an analogy to ecological cycles in human
activity, especially now when a machine A manufactures a product B; while the
product B, once used, is thrown away and its further history is of no importance
either for the machine, or manufacturing process, or a consumer.
To
develop a program of getting out of the environmental crisis we need specialists
with adequate understanding of both technical, biological, economic and social
aspects of this crisis. In other words, specialists having many-sided education
and being able to build an integrated scientific picture of the Universe;
professionals who can calculate the models, estimate their results, avoid
illusions and prevent erroneous and unachievable decision-making. But this
goal-directed activity requires productive level of thinking, the habit of using
different mental categories and having different notions on life values and
ideals. The noospheric era requires non-existent integrated specialists. The
question is bound to arise – how many universities is such a specialist
supposed to graduate from and how many years will it take and will the curricula
of four or five universities be synthesized
in his head ? The answer is bound to be negative. There must be a
different approach, but this is only a part of the problem. Such specialists
have never been trained anywhere. But even provided we can train them, provided
they develop outstanding programs of overcoming environmental crisis, these
programs will be of no value, because to implement them we need people
understanding what they do. That is, I mean both the training of ecologists –
broad specialists in the field and noospheric education of the Earth’s
population.
When
and how could we expect the results of this training? Sooner or later every man
will face the dilemma – does he
need superprofitable and
supercomfortable life which endows him with various diseases and shortens his
lifetime. In addition to direct paying for
natural resources every man pays indirectly for damaging the environment,
destroying his health, etc.
No
businessman would give up a profitable business justifying its existence by
improving living standards of the mankind. Hence only the society can do this
– as a first step, by means of a nation-wide referendum on the criminality of
anti-environmental businesses.
The
fact itself of the nation-wide referendum on the necessity of technological
changes will mean that prioritizing of values will change.
But
the mankind will be able to make competent decisions on planetary strategies not
before it is prepared for the idea of interrelation “of everything with
everything” where the system-forming element will be the interdependence of
ecology, biology, economics, technology, psychology and responsibility.
Intelligent
and deep-thinking people are required everywhere. But today the most important
sphere is ecology. Therefore my aim is to lay the foundation of professional
school of ecology-centered thinking, that is to develop the system of education
and training both of the population (children, adults and pensioners bringing up
their grandchildren) and of broad specialists, or desmoecologists (from the
Greek desmo- binding).
Any
attentive reader is bound to ask a reasonable question – why should you
introduce a new term “desmoecology”, why not “Noospheric Pedagogy” or
something of the kind? The answer is that though difficult to admit it, my
favourite science has discredited itself.
Young
and not so young college professors, school teachers, students and their parents
are waiting for straightforward answers to the questions: what to teach, how to
teach the young generation? But the existing “gobbledygook”, complicated
terminology of pedagogy discourage
people from opening a book with such title. So introducing a new term
“desmoecology”, the author has two aims in view: 1) to be as brief as
possible; 2) not to lose a potential reader by using a notorious word.
Last
but not least. Adolf Diesterweg,
the founder of creative education, used
to say that treating the same
problem from ten various points of view is the best way of education. While in
reports and research papers repetitions are not recommended, in education they
are vital because without them the acquisition of knowledge is impossible. In
this book I tried to follow this principle.
What
was the reason of writing this book?
The book summarizes results of research done at
the Department of Ecology and Ecological Education, headed by the author:
problems of humankind development, gnosiological theory development, ecological
crisis development turned out to be inseparable, and thus, at the beginning of
the XXI century, on the eve
of “Rio + 10, the author hopes that in the deadlock of attempts to overcome
the environmental crisis this book will be helpful.