Post 122.
 
In the news this week, “Vanishing glaciers threaten alpine biodiversity.”  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230504111831.htm Science Daily is a web source I check regularly to keep up on the latest scientific research on ecological concerns. Though I am no expert in biology, or ecological science, research is disseminated in a way the average literate citizen can know what scientists are working on, and what we are learning. It is the responsibility of all citizens in the 21st Century to be, to the best of their ability, ecologically literate. I was recently talking with somebody who thought there was a time (I guess in the 90s?) scientists thought plastic bags were better for the environment than paper bags at grocery stores. I explained that I requested paper throughout these decades of increased plastic use. The misperception is easily dismissed as nonsense, but this broad lack of knowledge is a danger to humanity’s (and countless other diverse interlinked species) continued survival on Mother Earth. We are choking on plastics. Plastics have never been a good idea. They’re a dirty technology and they’re replaceable in most (not all) of their modern-day uses.
 
            Back to this week’s news: Researchers at the University of Leeds studied the results of climate changed generated glacier melting, and its impact on invertebrates that live in cold meltwater rivers in the European Alps. As species lose habitat, they face further pressure from tourism, skiing and hydroelectric plants. “Writing in the paper, the researchers describe the "substantial work" that is necessary to protect the biodiversity in rivers that are being fed by retreating glaciers. The locations where glaciers still exist late in the 21st century are likely to be prioritised for hydropower dam construction and ski resort development.”

            The 21st Century has been described as the century of the Sixth Great Mass Extinction. We are facing loss of an addition 1/3 of all species by the end of the century. Previous mass extinctions have occurred because of asteroids, ocean acidification, and volcanic activity. https://ourworldindata.org/mass-extinctions Today, a mass extinction is being driven by anthropocentrism--placing human wants above all other species needs, which includes use of cheap oil, plastics, and other polluting consumer products that hurts impoverished humans and non-human beings. It is the responsibility of music teachers and students to keep alive the songs of species (including metaphorical songs for non-vocal plants, fungi, and animals) that our industries have placed in danger.

            How might a music educator approach ecological literacy in this case?

Students can be directed to write songs for specific at-risk species, requiring student research of the species, how they live and survive, and challenges to the species; to cultivate public empathy (e.g., producing an informance/performance concert), and, ultimately, form plans of action to conserve species and ecosystems.

DS
 
 Link to image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Mont_Blanc_oct_2004.JPG/640px-Mont_Blanc_oct_2004.JPG

Post 121.
 
In education, during the late 20th Century (and in music education scholarship, beginning in the early 21st Century) an explicit place-conscious, also called place-based, teaching emerged in scholarship. However it was already a part of teaching practice before this body of scholarship emerged. For instance, the Foxfire educational movement emerged in the 1960s as a way for students to learn about natural and cultural history of Appalachia, and taking students outdoors. https://www.foxfire.org/education/

            Outdoor education programs, such as Foxfire, provided one major precursor for place-conscious education. Other educators working on problems within democratic education, indigenous education, environmental education, and critical pedagogy constructed place-conscious educational theory as a critical approach to education in specifics. This is, I think most readers would agree, inherently radical in today’s educational climate, where students spend so many hours linked to educational technology’s screens, and high-stakes standardized testing to support national government policies and corporate profit margins.

            In music education (and likely in education in general), two strains of place-conscious education arose. Stauffer’s place-conscious music education centers the social aspects of place. https://hugoribeiro.com.br/area-restrita/Regelski_Gates-Music_education_for_changing_times.pdf#page=190 This approach emphasizes the narratives people make within places, and sees places as socially constructed. Socially speaking, this approach looks not only at schools as places of meaning-making, but also local meanings and stories that include various ways people make, curate, learn, and hear music. In contrast, Bates’s place-conscious music education considers the social, but also the aspects of “land” that are included in much outdoor and indigenous place-conscious theory beyond music education scholarship. http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/Bates12_2.pdf Bates argues that music educators begin “knowing and caring for the ground we live on, re-discovering a sense of place, and reclaiming and cultivating sustainable and sustaining values, dispositions, and behaviors.”

            Both of these perspectives have influenced my own pedagogy; but Bates’s ideas have been more influential for cultivating eco-literate music pedagogy. http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/Shevock19_1.pdf I also draw on 1920’s-40s music educator and philosopher Satis Coleman, whose environmental philosophy for music education emphasized the spiritual elements of nature, non-human musics, repurposing materials to make instruments in the classroom, challenging efficiency narratives, connecting to non-Western musics and storytelling, and considering evolutionary theory’s insights into teaching and learning music. Through this, I believe, we can draw together the social and ecological perspectives on place-consciousness, and offer our students a holistic, locally meaningful, grounded, and inspiring music education.
 
DS
 
 Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Corn_garden.jpg/640px-Corn_garden.jpg