This week's reading focuses on Environmental Education. It identifies academic institutions and the media as main actors in environmental struggles and it looks at the conflicts among them to reach their goals. As shown by Gillian Symons in "Education For Sustainability", Environmental Education (EE) enables one to develop the skills needed to analyze and solve environmental problems. It teaches us How and not What to think about the environment. It also enhances our decision-making skills as well as develops our critical thinking by increasing our understanding of the environmental challenges we are faced with today. The media, on the other hand, want to teach us what to think and not how to think. They do so by choosing a certain framework and presenting it to us by visual means. In his work, "Participatory Democracy in Enemy Territory", DeLuca shows how the media filter situations so that they affect profit orientation framing and conventions. He shows this in a long analysis of a CBS clip on the Greenpeace confrontation with whalers and he shows how it is presented in a heroic Cold War frame. The media are often also intertwined with corporations who incorporate them into their strategy to promote their image and self-interest. This has become part of a new rhetoric of Image politics that helps increase corporate power and influence. Therefore, one needs to be aware of the bias that may exist within EE because of the inevitable interconnection between the media, corporations and education.
             One of the accusations made by Donna Lee King in the second chapter of her book "Selling Environmentalism to kids" is that we are often misdirected because of the contradiction that lies in the simultaneous promotion of conservation and consumption. EE and liberal environmentalism assume the possibility of environmental change with political, economic and social reproduction. This
             ...