What strikes me as I read Ecotopia is that I enjoy it because I understand the historical context in which it was written. I am always nostalgically amused by the '70's because for the most part they are on the periphery of my memory; though my very earliest memory is of Nixon's tapes (I thought we had them, because my mother had a reel-to-reel tape player), my first true awareness of the outside world was Reagan's election in 1980.
The pedagogical point here is that Ecotopia provides social studies teachers with their own curriculum--whoever gets to study the seventies? In addition of course, is all the stuff we could do with the history, economy, geography, etc. of California, Oregon, and Washington. Then the added bonus is that "context" as a concept is pretty Englishy, especially when students write a creative piece as they do on red team in which they are always required to use social studies-type details.
The science aspects of Ecotopia are so obvious I stopped noting them after about 10 pages.
1 comment:
You are taking me way back! I remember reading Ecotopia in college. In fact, I think I might still have a ratty paperback copy on the bedstead bookshelf. It sounds like your courses are very cool.
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