The politics of environmental education

It is hard not to feel frustrated these days if you are an environmental educator. The field has been put under a microscope as of late with rebukes coming from all directions suggesting that our methods are biased, our science lacks rigor, and our agendas are corrupt. As educators, the collective response of our field to these criticisms has largely taken place on a methodological level. For instance, the North American Association for Environmental Education prepared standards and guidelines to try to strengthen the credibility of environmental education (EE). There have also been calls for more rigorous reviews of existing EE materials and attempts to highlight "quality " environmental education materials as if to say to the world, "See we're not entirely bad. " In this article I argue that the response to criticisms leveled against the field of environmental education has been inadequate, largely because it fails to address the political context of the criticisms. By ignoring this context, environmental educators have allowed our detractors to dictate the terms of debate and to inaccurately characterize the field of EE