Earth Education... A New Beginning
For All Those Who Love This Planet & Its Life

Author: Steve Van Matre
Format: Paperback
Length: 334 pages
Publisher: The Institute for Earth Education
ISBN: 0917011023

Notes: A comprehensive manual for designing your own earth education programs.

Highly Recommended!

Item #: BEEA

Price: $21.95

Order fulfillment provided by The Simple Living Network. Order by phone 800-318-5725 or 509-395-2323.

For over twenty years the public has been led to believe that there is a serious educational response underway regarding the environmental problems of the earth. It is not true. The environmental education movement has been led astray:

• trivialized by mainstream education

• diluted by those with other agendas

• co-opted by the very agencies and industries that have contributed so much to the problems

Earth Education... A New Beginning proposes another direction -- an alternative that many environmental leaders and teachers around the world have already taken. It is called The Earth Education Path, and anyone can follow it in developing a genuine educational program made up of magical learning adventures.

Earth education aims to accomplish what environmental education set out to do, but didn't: to help people improve upon their cognitive and affective relationship with the earth's natural communities and life support systems, and begin crafting lifestyles that will lessen their impact upon those places and processes on behalf of all the earth's passengers.

If you care about the health of our troubled planet, then you should read what Steve Van Matre, an internationally known educator, has to say about how we lost a whole generation of teachers and leaders and what you can do to help them find their way again.

Earth Education... A New Beginning contains over 300 pages on the template and tools necessary for crafting a serious educational response to our environmental problems. In addition, you'll find many easy to follow guidelines and tips for:

• Removing Disguises
• Adding Touches
• Making Magic
• Achieving Focused Participation
• Inputs For Solitude Journals
• Building Values
• Lessening Impact Tasks
• Adding Adventure
• Immersing Techniques
• and much, much more

Now, anyone can build an earth education program -- anytime, anywhere -- and this book will show you how.

Excerpts:

People don't understand even the simplest of environmental connections: between fast-food burgers and the destruction of the world's forests, between decorative lighting or frivolous appliances and the accelerating costs of nuclear-generated electricity, between our over-packaged and over-processed foodstuffs and our growing difficulty in maintaining clean drinking water... or the very direct personal effect that such situations have on their own lives. That's enough; you probably get the point. In environmental education we never did the job we set out to do.

After two decades, millions of dollars, and far more words, many of the environmental education publications and projects, training sessions and manuals designed to change people's behavior have all but disappeared. What happened? I think we blew it, and it just may have been our last best shot.

Copyright © 1990 The Institute for Earth Education

Reviews:

Perhaps the most creative force in Environmental Education curriculum design is Steve Van Matre, the charismatic leader of The Institute for Earth Education... Earth education immerses learners in ecological systems as the "deep ecology" wing of Environmental Education. Van Matre's work has been replicated planet-wide; his activities form the backbone of many nature center programs.

• E Magazine

With fighting words, Steve Van Matre sallies forth with a comprehensive program for educating all of us.... I recommend that you at least listen to what he has to say, not that he (or I, heh heh) has all the answers, but because I have noticed that most of the effective teachers I know use similar methods. This way of going at things gets results.

• Ecolog, The Whole Earth Catalog

Van Matre wants to set professional educators on a new path, an alternative to the pale, weak and demeaning version of environmental education taught in most schools.

• Bill Devall, author of Deep Ecology

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I have been working for an "enviromental education" firm for a year now. I love the children. I love sharing the beauty and wonder of our planet with them... Still, I had this feeling of dissatisfaction. Why couldn't I get the message to go home with them? ...I didn't know where to begin. Until... I found your book on earth education. Hooray! At last someone not afraid to take a really critical look at what is going on in our environmental education centers. Thank you for explaining so clearly all of my frustrations and giving me some tools to work with.

• Andrea Voss, Sherman Oaks, California

While reading Earth Education... A New Beginning I have to throw the book down, scream a little, go sweep the floor, have a cup of coffee, and only then can I go back for more. The excitement is too much.

• Sonya Nikolay, Teacher, Cambridge, Wisconsin

About The Author:

Steve Van Matre is the author of Acclimatization, Acclimatizing, Sunship Earth, The Earth Speaks, Earthkeepers, Earth Education... A New Beginning and Sunship III. A former university professor, camp director, youth leader, school teacher, and educational consultant, he now travels the world introducing the earth education alternative to others.

Other Information:

The Institute for Earth Education is the world's largest organization for educators in the environmental movement, offering an alternative to the supplemental, infusion approach to educating students about our environmental problems. There are formal Branches underway in a dozen countries, with an international home base at Cedar Cove in Greenville, West Virginia.

Related Resources:

Earth Education... A New Beginning For All Those Who Love This Planet & Its Life
      By Steve Van Matre (Paperback)

Sunship Earth An Earth Education Program For Getting To Know Your Place In Space
      By Steve Van Matre (Paperback)

Earthkeepers Four Keys For Helping Young People Live In Harmony With The Earth
      By Steve Van Matre, Bruce Johnson (Paperback)

SUNSHIP III Perception & Choice For The Journey Ahead
      By Steve Van Matre, Bruce Johnson (Paperback)

Rangers Of The Earth Young People Responding To The Planet's Cry For Help
      By Steve Van Matre & Laurie Farber (Paperback)

The Earth Speaks A Powerful Tribute To Our Home In Space
      By Steve Van Matre, Bill Weiler (Paperback)

The Living More Lightly Profile Duplication Masters For Group Study
      By Steve Van Matre (Duplication Masters)