Under the Green Thumb: Totalitarian Sustainability on Campus

Autor/in	Kissel, Adam
Titel	Under the Green Thumb: Totalitarian Sustainability on Campus
Quelle	In: Academic Questions, 23 (2010) 1, S.57-69 (13 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0895-4852
DOI	10.1007/s12129-009-9144-4
Schlagwörter	Stellungnahme; Astronomy; Sustainable Development; Sustainability; Authoritarianism; Campuses; Higher Education; Values; Beliefs; General Education; Religion; Undergraduate Students; Colleges; Residential Institutions; Dormitories; Group Experience; College Environment; Delaware; New Hampshire + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Astronomie; Nachhaltige Entwicklung; Nachhaltigkeit; Autoritarismus; Hochschulbildung; Hochschulsystem; Hochschulwesen; Wertbegriff; Belief; Glaube; Allgemein bildendes Schulwesen; Allgemeinbildung; College; Hochschule; Fachhochschule; Wohnumgebung; Student housing; Studentenwohnheim; Hochschulumwelt
Abstract	What's wrong with the sustainability movement, the author contends, is the uncritical homogenization of humanity. Sustainability advocates inevitably seek to homogenize people's deepest values, because their goal is to save Earth from ecological, economic, and social disaster. Everyone must participate--everyone must share the same key values and beliefs--or justice will not be achieved and the planet will be doomed. In this article, the author focuses on the totalitarian impulses of the American college campus, the place where a dogmatic unity of views on controversial issues should be least welcomed and most suspect. Strangely, the ready-made conclusions of sustainability ideologues are presented as facts to freshmen, who are encouraged to get with the program rather than think for themselves and potentially reach differing conclusions by the end of their college careers. Indeed, the point of the "Education for Sustainability" (EFS) agenda is to get everyone educated into the sustainability ideology worldwide, thereby making the world safe and vibrant for all future generations--and creating a whole new world where everyone agrees with those whom the National Association of Scholars calls "sustainatopians." The idea is to change students' thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs, and habits to conform. The ubiquitous assumptions of EFS are that students are too consumerist, too intolerant, and too capitalist for the planet to survive for more than one or two more generations without quick and fundamental change. This moral, even spiritual re-education, intended to green out every atom of one's life, stands exactly opposite to the "marketplace of ideas" foundation of liberal education. It is the opposite of liberating the human mind to think and the human soul to discover its deepest identity. (Contains 22 footnotes.) (ERIC).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10