Download - The Taft School

Complex environmental
issues can polarize
communities. What role
do you think education
plays in preparing
students to face
complex global issues?
How has your training
and experience as a
geologist who has
worked on projects all
over the country and in
South America shaped
your vision?
What is your message
to Taft students about
sustainability?
A
Powerful new tools allow us to realize in great detail the effect of the world’s
increasing population on its supporting earth systems. We have much work to
do in order to address even the simplest of related questions. Academic communities
like Taft are just the kinds of places to hold these challenging and engaging discussions
necessary to form the kinds of leaders that local and global communities will require to
navigate waters ahead.
The education of future generations is a critical factor in maintaining healthy earth
systems and promoting practices of earth stewardship. Responsible educational institutions
play a primary role in helping students prepare for the modern world by teaching
important basic skills such as evaluating sources, thinking critically, considering issues
from a range of perspectives and maintaining global awareness.
As such, sustainability represents an important new interdisciplinary area of curriculum
to prepare students with 21st-century literacy skills. The wealth of accumulated
knowledge in many related science disciplines, readily accessible online sources, and
at times turbulent debates on our interrelationships with the earth’s resources and ecosystems
are fertile grounds to stimulate students’ curiosity, imagination, creativity and
ingenuity in considering our own civilization’s pathways into the future.
As Tony Wagner discusses in The Global Achievement Gap, schools must be rigorous
in motivating students to want to excel, and also need “to change to keep pace with
changes in the world in general and the world of work.” Students need to understand
how to sort through massive conflicting streams of information, as well as qualify and
question their sources.
A
No matter what project you undertake, you rarely work alone, and success,
more often than not, depends upon true engagement and support of those
both immediately around you and in the greater community. Getting to know the culture,
realities and individual challenges people face are instrumental in fostering good
working relationships. So one must work with people and seek to foster synergy. Never
overlook the fact that the most pragmatic solutions are often the best. In addressing
complex hydrogeologic studies and environmental cleanup efforts, I learned that seemingly
impossible projects can be accomplished when everyone’s purposes are aligned
and people help each other toward shared goals.
A
I want students to become leaders, to own the process of making this campus
more efficient, more sustainable. It starts with turning lights off, recycling or
taking shorter showers. But those are also the low-hanging fruit. As leaders, they need
to think bigger, to think about bringing in new ideas and new ways of doing things—
whether that’s wind power or organic farming.
Despite all the gloomy stories you may hear about climate change, from my perspective
of having worked to address the effects of the Industrial Revolution on our soil and
groundwater, I have no doubt that we have the resources and technology to address
impacts of our burgeoning civilization on our own atmosphere and ecosystems. I’m an
idealist and a hopeless romantic, and I think we can have it all. j
26 Taft Bulletin Winter 2012