Post your questions and/or comments about our class reading as comment to this prompt. Please include your two responses (either two questions, two comments, or a combination of both) in one comment.
I was originally going to write my own examples, but the first three comments (Nicole's, Miranda's, and Brad's/km248610) are great examples. I don't want to limit the possibilities of your responses, so let's keep it open. I do, however, expect to see sincere interaction with the texts. So if you're confused, angered, fulfilled, uplifted, intrigued, etc. with the text, explore that! Since this kind of exploration can be extensive and maybe even exhausting, your responses should be more than a couple sentences long. If you have a question, explain it and give context for your question so we can provide a better answer.
Happy reading/responding :)
You always hear that it is better to be specialized then well rounded because being specialized is better when you want to be successful. However if what Orr says is true then this is a bag thing. If people were more well rounded they would understand the effects of their self-motivated decisions to be successful because when you know about everything, you get the picture as a whole. This is harder for a highly educated, specialized person, however, because they are always blinded by the light of success. To me a truly good person is someone that is considerate and thinks how they are affecting the others around them. The problem with todays society is that those people are far and few between and calaboration between the educated is practically non-existant.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with Merton's assertion that you should avoid success. I personally believe and have witnessed that people can be both be successful and have integrity.
ReplyDeleteI also disagree with Orr in that knowledge and human goodness is not increasing. I feel that education gives you the tools that you need, but it comes down to one's personal integrity as to what they do with that education. I don't feel you can "teach" integrity. It is something you either have or do not have. The reason I feel that knowledge is incresing is due to the fact that we are now paying attention and trying to restore that of which we have dismantled. Environmental education IS being talked about and taught. In prior years it was not common to find recycling bins, fair trade and organic items in most establishments. We are taking notice but we also have a long way to go!
I am really intrigued by how Orr began his piece. He immediately sets the critical tone for his speech to the graduating class of 1990 at Arkansas College. He opens his address with shocking statistics about how much our planet loses in a day all because of the human population and if this doesn't make one think about their role in this destruction and how they can fix it, then that person does not care enough for the place in which they live. His opening statement literally draws readers and listeners in and truly makes you think. Just after reading the first paragraph of this essay, I was wanting more.
ReplyDeleteThe part of this essay that grabbed me most was actually Orr's first myth:"ignorance is a solvable problem." As soon as I read this sentence, I laughed to myself because that is the dumbest thing i have ever heard. Of course ignorance can't be solved. This world is full of ignorant people and it is never ending. Orr made an excellent point by stating that with more knowledge, comes ignorance, and this thought scared me a bit. His belief, which i now believe to be true, basically said, "forget education, its only going to make you more ignorant." But what I got out of this, was how I should be educated and what I should take out of my education. I believe Orr has some very good points and I would live to challenge myself to learn in an efficient way.
One area of this article that really drew me in was the point Orr made about "managing the planet". It brings up the fact that it is almost impossible to control something as large as a planet, even if it sounds like something that many people would believe in. He is correct in saying we could not manage a planet for it is far too vast.
ReplyDeleteOrr's argument in this article that our type of education is hindering our understanding of the planet is a very interesting point. It is interesting because there is a truth to it. The truth is that while civilization moves forward it is also leaving behind the necessary tools and skills that give us a better knowledge and understanding of the word we live in.
In my opinion, most of what Orr says cannot be justified. I think that success is the main key to life. When Orr talks about the fourth myth I started to doubt his beliefs. I feel like after you are out of college you understand the broad integrity of the unity of things. As knappn said after college you are so much more rounded, and this in my opinion is the way to figure out how things go together and how things work and Orr totally says the opposite. I could be reading this wrong but he quotes Merton and says you should avoid success at all cost, I feel like this is contradicting everything I have ever learned and I think is complete malarkey. I feel like if you do not strive for success then what do you have to work for? In our society I don't think enough people strive for success enough, which I think is the problem. Up until Orr starts explaining the "myths" I had the upmost respect for the man but after this I came to realize I only agree with little that he says. One instance when I agreed with him was when he spoke about how the environment was diminishing as we knew it. I agree with this but his ways of trying to so called solve it I feel are not going to work. Education has been the same for many years I don't see a need to change it now. It worked fine back in the day when no one worried that much about the economy. I feel as though our economy and environment are slowly depleting, but not because we are not conscious enough about the unity of how things go together. I think they are being diminished because the dumb choices our leaders make and the way people react to them. Just my opinion thanks for listening.
ReplyDeleteI did have one question if we do not strive for success what have we been working for the entire time we have been learning to further better ourselves?
David Orr’s piece really caught my eye and opened things up. Especially in the beginning when he explains what is happening to our Earth everyday, which really surprised me. People know that our climate and natural systems are in jeopardy, but not this harshly. Even though we are learning these things in school, we are not taught enough of it. I did agree with Orr’s final principle for what education must be for in that “the way learning occur is as important as the content of particular courses.” Students should be exposed to more than a classroom. Getting out into the world to learn would stick to students more rather than memorizing it for a test or quiz. If they experience what is really going on in the world, it may open their eyes up to actually do something about it.
ReplyDeleteI did however disagree with Orr’s second myth in that “with a enough knowledge and technology we can manage planet Earth.” Orr thinks that the safety of the earth cannot be managed. Though people are doing things to try and make the Earth a better place. It is not like they are trying to destroy it even more. People are getting more and more educated about how to make the Earth a better place for people and it's animals.
I think you could argue with Orr about having success. He says "that the planet does not need more "successful people." That is not true because you need to be successful in life one way or another. You can have a great job and be successful or you can just do something that interest you in live in general and still be successful. In life you always hear people say be successful, this proves my agruement. You should always try and be successful in life.
ReplyDeleteI can only agree on Orr's article to a certain extent. I do believe that mankind's desire to know everything can slowly be destroying the purity and natural beauty of our world. I do not believe that humans were meant to know as much as we do and I feel as though our increased technology will eventually be our downfall. I like that Orr mentioned Mary Shelley's book Frankenstein, which I happened to read in high school, because it helped me have a better understanding of his theories and i could relate certain circumstances to his beliefs.
ReplyDeleteI do not like the quote "be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success," by Thomas Merton because the meaning of success is different to everybody. Success, in my opinion, is a feeling of fulfillment and joy out of life. Just pure happiness. Success is not about money, social standing, or knowledge. I feel this quote is extremely ignorant because life would be completely pointless if we had nothing to work for and no main goal in our lives to achieve.
Towards the beginning of the article i caught myself agreeing with what Orr was saying. I was shocked by the truth of what happens to the earth each day such as losing 116 square miles of rainforest and population increasing by 250,000. He also speaks of people being ignorant which is true because that is why those statistics have gotten so bad. As the article went on though, there was some things i could not agree with. Orr says, "The plain fact is that the planet does not need more 'successful' people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form." Schooling is to become successful and i think being successful is a key part of life. You need a good job and money to survive. I disagree with his second principle saying we are stuffed with techniques and methods regardless of how they think we will use it. It is up to us to use the knowledge we have obtained and where to set our goals from there and be successful.
ReplyDeleteI guess i was kind of confused with this article because i went in and out of agreeing with Orr. I agree with one of his principles saying "the way learning occurs is as important as the content of particular courses. "
I do really like how Orr starts off his paper, it gets the point across all while making the reader want to read more. One statement that really caught my eye was when he said "we've fooled ourselves into thinking that we are much richer then we are." Thats so true I mean a lot of people or companies spends money like it grows trees. Our government today does this with everything its insane to think about however the government wont tell you how we are 12 trillion dollars in debt but how we, the middle working class just may get a cut in our taxes. The government thinks we are richer then we really are. I also like when hes talking about how we need to master one skill and one skill only to be truely good at it. Also how in school and even college we are told to take classes that we may never use what we learn in it ever again. Wow Orr has a way to make you think about what he is actually saying. It suprises me that he wrote this while he was still in college thats insane for someone to have that much insight at such a young age.
ReplyDeleteI dont have the book for class yet but i ordered it and it should be here by tuesday next week
My first feeling while reading was shock. I didn’t realize how much we are destroying the planet. I guess I had just never thought about it in that way before. Information about the earth had never been presented to me in that way before. But as I kept reading, I started to disagree with much of what Orr was saying. I agreed with him when he said that we need more peacekeepers in this world, but when he said that we don’t need anymore successful people I disagreed. This is a bizarre statement for him to make. I understand that he meant the world does not need anymore power hungry people but we do need people who have motivation and drive to make the world better. Success doesn’t always mean being a CEO of a company or being the boss of everyone in your office. If we need more peacekeepers then there needs to be people who are motivated to be successful so that they can become a person that can help the earth. But that person can only do that if they are in a position of power and to do so, you must be successful.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this article I also felt confused by Orr. It seems as though sometimes he contradicts himself. In this article, he quotes Wiesel talking about how the German’s taught the youth during the Second World War. “It emphasized theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciousness, answers instead of questions, ideology and efficiency rather than conscience.” You could say that the Germans during this time were brain washing their people into believing and doing what they wanted them to do. When I was reading this article, I felt as if I was being brain washed into thinking in Orr’s way. He was giving us the answers and not letting us ask the questions just like Elie Wiesel said the Germans did.
I thought Orr's article was interesting but could only agree with him on certain points. I do believe humans are participating in the slow decay of Earth. The statistics Orr stated were very shocking I agree with Orr that planet Earth is not manageable and we should stop trying to control nature such as he described with an example of Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein. I disagree with Orr about having succesful people in this world. The planet needs succesful people because successful people provide jobs for others. Also in today's economy the rich are stimulating the economy more and more. Orr also had a good point when he said "the goal of education is not mastery of subjec matter, but of one's person." I agree with him on this because learning doesn't need to just be about the subject; it is learning about yourself and understanding the things surrounding you.
ReplyDeleteI was kinda shocked when i read Orr's article about the typical day on Earth. Those are all shocking statistics. I do believe that humans are to blame for some of the stuff that Orr talked about in his article. But i also believe that humans are doing their best to slow down or stop some of the things stated. Humans need to live places so they have to take down trees in some places. But they also grow them in other parts of the world. I also go against is idea that we can't manage the world with increase knowledge and technology. I think that as we increase with knowledge we increase in technology and some day we will find a way to manage the planet using both.
ReplyDeleteMy first reaction to the reading by David Orr, I competley agree with the guy. I feel education is valued too much and now we are at the point that is hurting not helping anyone. Of course having an education is very important or I would not be here right now typing any of these if it did not mean anything to my future. I feel that it is important that we learn about several different topics and explore possibilites, but on the other had I feel that having a piece of paper with a degree title on it, telling employeers how smart or able you are to do a job is insane. It is valued almost more than anything in the world. There is not enough hands on involment in the world and thats how this country was developed.
ReplyDeleteThe main question is, With all the education being taught throughout the world, why is the world still running into as many problems as we are? Shouldn't we be past these conflicts due to the increased demand to be educated?
Something is wrong but finding and fixing the problem may almost be impossible.
When I first started reading "What Is Education For?" by David Orr, I immediately agreed with him because the statistics he provided were so alarming and his argument made sense, at least in my opinion. But when he started questioning the "myths" that Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes' believed to be true, I started forming arguments with what he was saying. And even though his points are clear and could make sense, I don't particularly agree with all of them. For example, I do agree that we should not try to "manage planet earth," as he stated in the second myth. But I do believe that knowledge is increasing (myth 3), because I believe that there are always things people can learn and gain from different experiences that will increase their knowledge.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I was confused with Orr's ideas of "What Education Must Be For," particularly the first principle that all education is environmental education. I feel as if that's taking the idea to an extreme, because even though everything could be related to environmental studies, I don't agree that everything should automatically be directed back to the environment. But then, I do agree with the fifth principle that states "the importance of 'minute particulars' and the power of examples over words," because I think that just by hearing something in a class doesn't mean that the student actually understands it- to experience something has a much greater affect than just hearing about it.
Orr has a lot of facts to back up his opinions, and has some very good arguments as a result. However his views are just ideas, and the people that are successful and leading comfortable lives are not going to give that up for the welfare of the planet. I would like to believe that this wasn't the case but all of us college students are perfect examples. We're paying thousands of dollars a year so that we can make our adult lives more comfortable and profitable. so while Orr is right in theory and his views are admirable. He is expecting to much from the successful people of the world.
ReplyDeleteIf we didn't have education then how would we learn of our decimation of the planet?
ReplyDeleteBefore beginning Orr's "What is Education For?" I expected a rather boring and likely quick read. First paragraph lived up to expectations, but my attention was soon consumed as I began to debate, question, ponder, and scarcely praise the text. Repeatedly, I found statements very intriguing and contemplated logic, benefit, and cost from multiple sides. For example, "It makes far better sense to reshape ourselves to fit a finite planet than to attempt to reshape the planet to fit our infinite wants" lead to a rather in dept comparison of the logic behind shaping the human race against the logic in shaping Earth. Attempting master and manipulate nature as a whole is indeed nearly an unfathomable task. Reshaping us, as Orr suggested, is impossibly difficult as well. Human nature; our most basic needs of food, water, shelter, wanting to belong, and a desire to be loved, among others, drive every decision to some extent now and forever. On top of that, our instinctual default reaction when relations with one or multiple people turn sour is to beat their ass, be it with sticks or tanks. Trying to change lifestyles of any population would be meet with certain resistance in multiple forms on multiple levels. Is it worth or even possible to change us?
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, Mother Earth certainly doesn't approve of our new found oil addiction, CO2 fetish, or the countless other nasty habits mankind has picked up. Any effort to reshape Earth would have its own challenges in the form of rock, water, and weather for starters. Believing that we can mold Earth or human being into anything we see fit in nearly pure ignorance.
Shortly after coming back from a tangent way to long for how little my opinion matters on the subject, I began to disagree with the relevance of multiple examples and most of the larger points Orr presented. Consider; Orr cited David Ehrenfeld and says "biology departments no longer hire faculty in areas as systematics, taxonomy, or ornithology." Seems rather counter productive at first. Orr writes that mankind as a whole is losing valuable information while fields such as molecular biology and genetic engineering are overemphasized. First, I propose that in this modern day and age, knowledge collected through scientific or academic research and/or held by any society as noble and true, cannot be lost without a nuclear war or zombie apocalypse destroying humanity as well know it. Furthermore, Orr described a lack of employment for systematics experts, who study diversification of life, taxonomist, who study classification within nature, and bird watchers as a serious concer. I doubt any undiscovered knowledge within those fields would yield any value to all but the research team who discovered, be relevant in the least to climate change, or impact the purpose of education.
Lastly, the fields being "overemphasized," molecular biology and genetic engineering, undeniably show greater potential to directly impact human society positively alone than systematics, taxonomy, and ornithology combined.
After reading the David Orr paper, I tend to agree with most of his points on education. There is a HUGE emphasis put on education in this day and age. Honestly, I believe college puts education second and making money first anyway. We have to many stupid people with degrees and people who have way more common sense without degrees. We are living in an Upside down culture where up is down and down is up. While David Orr's writings did seem to make sense regarding education, We can't just believe his statistics on our planet, after all Hilter was great at speeches too, and you see where that got us.
ReplyDeleteBefore reading Orr's paper, I expected a rather boring rant about flaws within todays education system and current environmental policy/practice. The first paragraph meet expectations. After that, however, I found myself questioning, debating, and occasionally arguing completely against most of Orr's opinions, "myths," solutions, broad generalizations, and logic in general. For instance, "It makes far better sense to reshape ourselves to fit a finite planet than to..reshape the planet." I don't necessarily agree or disagree with the statement, rather I don't think a "correct" solution exists at this time. Orr's reasoning seems sound here, claiming we simply don't know enough to mold Earth into the planet we desire, making the idea of tetra forming our world nearly unfathomable. But is reshaping the human race in its entirety feasible? Change in modern society of any sort always faces resistance on various levels. Furthermore, if lack of complete understanding of natural forces and process hinders altering Earth as we see fit, do human beings get the same respect? Just as some natural processes are not fully understood, human behavior is not fully understood. Nature can be spontaneous and unpredictable in the same way a disgruntled employee can show up to work strapped and on a rampage. Drastic changes to Earths landscape can be made in very short times using little more than dynamite and bulldozers. Drastically changing the ideals, beliefs, customs, or habits of a large population requires much more effort than lighting a fuse or operation construction equipment. I propose that both options presented have unique problems that lack solutions, because of this neither can be deemed a sensable solution at this time.
ReplyDeleteAt the top of page three Orr attempts to present a hole which we're digging ourselves into. Apparently, lack of employment opportunities for systematic experts, taxonomist, and ornithologist translates into knowledge being lost. I fail to see any connection between lack of new research and knowledge being "lost." Discoveries already made and conclusions already drawn do not disappear as funding for said research dwindles. Orr blames this on "overemphasis" on molecular biology and genetic engineering. What would benefit global civilization more; genetic engineering research leading to a cure for a genetic disease, or an ornithologist accurately predicting the migration patterns of swallows?
I was honestly shocked when I read the statistics that Orr gave on everyday occurences in the world. For the most part I agree with what Orr says. For most people these days, becoming educated means purely a higher income and a better job, not how can I take my education and help those around me. Those people that have the larger incomes because of their education are usually CEO's of large companies. Yes, they are good because they provide jobs and help build up our company. However, they make products and go on endeavors for marketing and profiting, and do not think about how their products could effect the environment or the world we live in. I agree with Orr on this point. I also agree with his "second myth" that we can create as much technology as we want and try to learn as much as we can, but in the end we will still not know all of Earth's secrets. I also agree with his "third myth" that some knowledge is being lost. To be honest, I had no idea ornithology even existed till this article, because larger sciences that are more about profit and less about the environment ARE emerging.
ReplyDeleteI agree/disagree with Orr's "fifth myth." He wrote that Thomas Merton told his students to avoid success at all costs. This is wrong. From birth we are coached, mentored, and pushed to thrive for success and that if we do not achieve success we have nothing. I agree with Sara on this that success means having fulfilled your goals and living happy, not necessarily to get the best job with the highest salary. I do agree that we need less CEO's and big shots creating companies left and right for their own personal gain and more people who love the environment and can bring something positive to this world, not necessarily physically, but emotionally.
My best guess as a summary to Orr's view, is that the smartest, most successful, most well-educated, and most wealthy are those to blame for destroying our planet. I believe every single person on this planet is in charge for this. There are so many simple things each individual person on this planet could do to contribute to bettering society and to put a small step forward to bettering our planet.