A Wake-Up Call for Educators by Rich Gamble

"Today the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released the results of a study...". So began a report released by Yahoo News on January 27, 2009, that grabbed my attention. The study showed that "changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible", even if (extremely unlikely) CO2 emissions were to be stopped completely. A tipping point has been reached: global warming and sea level rise are "locked in" over the next 1000 years. This report, one of many, is chilling in its semantic transition from the hypothetical to the actual, from proselytism to reality.

The time has come to adjust our thinking from "what if?" to "now what?". But not our thinking. It is largely too late for that. It is time to adjust the thinking of the next generation, our sons and daughter. To survive, our children need to be taught a new mindset, from preserving the old ways at all costs to learning to adapt in the face of inevitable change.

The thoughts of the fathers echoed off the walls of the classroom where I taught Leadership in a traditional New England boarding school on the day of the inauguration of newly elected President Obama. "I'm a '3' today - not the worst day of my life, but close," grumbled an 8th grade boy during our "check-in". "And why is that?" I asked. "Because of the election," he replied. "Things are going to change."

Yes, things are going to change, and not just because of politics. And the comfortable lifestyle enjoyed by most of the families of my former students, indeed most of us whose existence relies upon an infrastructure dependent upon fossil fuels and a climate that reflects the relative calm of our Anthropocene epoch, are destined for change as surely as my 8th grade student and his family. We must learn how to adjust.

In the spirit of welcoming challenge and responsibility I propose that it falls first to the educators of America to grasp the necessity for change and then to act upon it by adjusting curricula to that purpose. An emphasis on lessons that teach emotional intelligence, constructive mindsets, judicial and ethical decision making, empathy and selflessness are critical to the adaptation of the next generation to a radically changing planet. In Six Degrees author Mark Lynas reports that if the world continues its current rate of hydrocarbon proliferation into our atmosphere over the (then) next seven years we will reach another tipping point, one that will set in motion an unavoidable set of circumstances that must increase the warmth of our planet by 3 degrees, bringing drought and famine and consequent massive shifts in plant-able crop ranges and populations. To accept this challenge school curricula must change. To act responsibly, teachers must prepare students for this eventuality. As Marq de Villiers writes in his book The End: "We need to get over this absurd notion that we are endangering the planet...Earth has time. But we don't." As educators it is our professional responsibility to move more expediently across the divide from "what if?" to "now what?" and to begin now to re-frame the educational aims of our schools to reflect mindsets and skills for a new, more difficult world.

Can Ethics Be Taught?

Where do ethics come from? Is it nature or is it nurture? Brain research suggests it must be both. It seems likely that there could be a gene associated with ethics passed along; of right vs. wrong. Basic ethical processing would have been needed for early humans to engage socially with any success at all and the trait would have survived. However, the way in which the gene manifests itself would be shaped by the environment within which it is activated and the influences brought to bear. “Right” in our religious community is often different from “Right” in our business community. Research also suggests that we may possess as many inactive genes as active ones and that our inactive genes go right on sleeping unless they are awakened by “practicing” the trait they carry. Thus “practicing” ethical processing affirms the gene trait. But the ethics practiced might be those decided by the communities within which we currently reside (peer groups, neighborhood, and schoolyard) or… those that are carefully taught.
Brain research into ethical behavior suggests that ethical processing is developmental. It requires the higher cognitive reasoning of the frontal lobe to ameliorate the tendencies of the limbic, or emotional, areas. The brain develops in much the same order it evolved over man’s existence, from bottom to top. Thus the reptilian brain with basic essential functions for living comes first, the paleomammalion brain with its apparatus for emotion second, and the neomammalion brain with its refined processes including concept formation and cognitive reasoning, last. While researching how the brain makes judgments scientists discovered that an area of the upper brain known as the somatosensory cortex was activated when making difficult choices. This area supplies emotional context to the bodily sensations of pain and temperature, among others, as well as (apparently) feelings brought about by conscience. That is why we literally “feel” the pain of a difficult choice or decision.
But a child possesses a young frontal lobe not yet mature enough to process all of the consequences arising from unethical behavior, or to project the future relational difficulties that can arise from lying, stealing, or disrespect. Emotions arising from a fully developed limbic system can not be regulated by an under developed frontal lobe. Nor can he feel the “pangs” from an incomplete somatosensory cortex. And so a pre-pubescent child lacking brain development in areas critical to the abstract projection of feelings and consequences will require a construct or framework in its place. When we think in terms of a leadership curriculum for junior school students, we need to include a system that prepares them for ethical thought processing. Problem solving modules, decision making ladders, and similar templates that include the ethics component should be included. It is equally important, however, to model this behavior within the school community in a meaningful way.