| I put forth the argument that Joseph Meeker's notion of the deep connections between wisdom and wilderness are implied in Charles Wilkinson's ‘ethic of place’; and on the other hand, ‘ethic of place’ when practiced in the context of individuals or community opens up unusual opportunities through which we can begin to appreciate and benefit from the relationship between wisdom and wilderness. I have tried to instill in the reader what I have come to regard as ordinary sustainability —that common sense understanding of the concept from which individuals could make practical and worthwhile changes in their style of living, and therefore, given such change in a large enough segment of the population, would result in at least some noticeable easing of the environmental crisis we now face.; Wendell Berry, points us in the direction of ordinary sustainability in emphasizing the importance of an ecologically competent and active citizenry who know how to do for themselves and have the character traits of frugality, truthfulness, and good heartedness necessary to be a good neighbor and good citizen. I think these just might be the character traits that Wilkinson's ‘ethic of place’ rests upon. If nothing else, it would be difficult to envision the possibility of his shared community value—one determined to treat the environment and people as equals—without sincere reliance on an ecologically competent and active citizenry. Any meaningful success—amounting to a lessening of our current environmental crisis—of such an ethic would be contingent, I argue, on a community's willingness to collectively begin to understanding the inheritable relationship between wisdom and wilderness. I have rolled this collective understanding into ordinary sustainability , and as a way to get at it, I begin by accepting Berry's notion of ‘community’ as an indispensable term in any discussion connecting people and land, and I outlined ‘place-based education’ as the vehicle through which a community initiates such discussion. Finally, I ground this curriculum in theories of education that acknowledge, and then continue to depend upon, ‘the value of a particular place’—a rural Canadian village. |
