AW Water Modern Environmental Issues
From WildWiki
Below is a sample curriculum for introducing the wilderness concept to students on course.
Return to Mountain Curriculum
Overview:
This lesson introduces students to the concept of wilderness and the role that wilderness preservation has played throughout American history. Students will conduct research on different historical wilderness issues or events, and analyze those events in the context of the political and cultural climate of that particular time.
Objectives:
Students will be able to:
· Define wilderness; · Describe key players and events in the history of wilderness preservation; · Discuss what wilderness means both personally and from a societal point of view
Opening:'
What is wilderness? Ask the students to list words or phrases that come to their mind when they hear the word wilderness. Divide the students into small groups and give each group a different quotation about wilderness. Ask each group to take a few minutes to discuss their quotation, and to try to determine the author’s perspective on wilderness. How might the author define wilderness? What do you think the author thinks is the purpose or role of wilderness?
Possible quotations to use:
We simply need wilderness available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. —Wallace Stegner, 1960
(Wilderness preservationists) worship trees and sacrifice human beings to those trees. They want to save things they like, all for themselves. — Charles Fraser, paraphrased in Encounters with Archdruid, by John McPhee 1971
Wildlife once fed us and shaped our culture. It still yields us pleasure for leisure hours, but we try to reap that pleasure by modern machinery and thus destroy part of its value.— Aldo Leopold 1948
Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fibred and vitalized by regular contact with outdoor growths—animals, trees, sun warmth and free skies—or it will dwindle and pale. — Walt Whitman
In wilderness is the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia. — Charles Lindbergh, 1967
We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth, as “wild.” Only to the white man was nature a “wilderness” and only to him was the land “infested” with “wild animals” and “savage” people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. —Chief Luther Standing Bear, of the Oglala band of Sioux.
Nature is no great mother who has borne us. She is our creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life. —Oscar Wilde
Wilderness lovers like to speak of the equal rights of all species to exist. This ethical cloaking cannot hide the truth that green missionaries are possibly more dangerous, and certainly more hypocritical, than their economic or religious counterparts. — Ramachandra Guha
Activity
After each group has discussed their own quotation, conduct a “human likert-scale” activity with the whole class: Place a sign that says AGREE on one side of the room and DISAGREE on the other side of the room. Have the groups read their statements or quotations about wilderness and have the rest of the students move to the place in the room that best represents their own opinion on the statement. A student who strongly agrees with a statement should walk all the way to the AGREE side, a more neutral student should stay in the middle of the room, etc. Allow a few minutes of discussion on some of the quotations; as students’ opinions change throughout the discussion, they should move towards the appropriate spot in the room.
Discuss the different ways that wilderness was represented in these quotations. What are reasons for such different perspectives on wilderness? (the time period, the different values of the author, the context in which it was said) Explain that throughout American history, wilderness has meant different things to different people; there have been debates about what it is and what, if anything should be “done” with it.
Definition of Wilderness from the 1964 Wilderness Act:
"DEFINITION OF WILDERNESS
(c) A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this chapter an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value."
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