First Few Pages

If, as writer Robert Michael Pyle writes in his ecological biography The Thunder Tree: Lessons from an Urban Wildland, “… people connect with nature, it happens somewhere” (1993: xv), I believe that people connect with nature with and because of someone. Just as salient as Pyle’s moment of revelation about personal connections to place and landscape, then, is the recognition and acknowledgement of the interdependent chain of people and happenings that lead you to that moment of wild-eyed wonder. I have had the good luck and the privilege to be that person, and witness the moment of discovery first hand. The notion that our knowledge and exploration of place could facilitate connections between us, however, caught me entirely unawares. I first discovered the power that organized outdoor programs posses to bring together participants from very different social standings and backgrounds while working as a wilderness trip leader for a girls’ summer camp in the Midwest, and have since been captivated by the possible place for social justice work under the auspices of outdoor education.

In this paper I attempt to bring together the outwardly divergent forms of outdoor education and social justice learning. I am attempting to prove that outdoor education is an ideal setting and opportunity to face social justice concerns in a meaningful way. By design organized outdoor activities attempt to “immerse participants in a different environment, exposing them to the unfamiliar and in the process encouraging them to question accepted beliefs and practices” (Dumond, McDonald, and Ungar 2005: 332). Outdoor education innately places participants outside of their normal milieu; outside of one’s comfort zone and normal arenas, outside of one’s traditional setting it is easier to discuss controversial issues like social justice (Warren 2005: 1990). Although some efforts have been made to meld the teachings of outdoor learning with social justice facilitation, I will use Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of cultural capital and habitus, Murray Bookchin’s notions of humanity’s hierarchical relationship with nature, Mikhail Bakhtin’s ontological discourse, Max Weber’s ideas of nature and culture, and Louis Althusser’s connections between society and setting to make the arguments that certain changes have to be made in the outdoor industry in order for these programs to be used to discuss social justice concerns.

The unlikely friendship between two eleven-year-old, dishwater, and Wisconsin north woods long past sunset combined to teach me my first valuable lesson about outdoor education and social justice facilitation. XXX, by far the most talkative and eager of the group of ten campers who had been entrusted me for three days of beginner wilderness adventures, fiddled her braids, tapped her foot anxiously, and looked at me in disbelief as I began to dig a small cat hole. YYY, small and blond looked so far from her home in Kansas clutched the bucket of wash water from dinner as I instructed them on the proper disposal methods for waste in the backcountry. No matter that our backcountry happened to be a local state forest campground. I handed the trowel to XXX to finish digging our sump hole to help drain the dinner remnants, and laughed as she commented on how no one from her Detroit neighborhood would ever imagine her playing in the dirt. YYY chimed in about how in school a few years back they had gone to dig for earthworms in science class, but that was the only time she’d ever done so. They shrieked together, while holding both sides of our small sieve screen, as they accidentally splashed a bit of soapy water on their fingers. YYY then gravely hushed XXX, as she feared the extra noise would wake the bears. The chatter continued as I talked them through the rest of the task, and once we’d finished XXX and YYY bounded off to bed together, best friends through the rest of the trip. Bears and a terror of the darkness surrounding our campsite were never mentioned again. The small job which I had inadvertently and unwittingly assigned both girls, helped them to not only gain some first-hand wilderness living skills, but also to work through a fear of their surroundings, and to connect with yet unknown peers on a more meaningful level.

Proposal--So You Get the Idea

As the Reverend Jesse Jackson wrote, “You cannot separate environment from empowerment…It’s not a matter of science and legislation. It’s a matter of morality” (Jackson 1991). Issues of environmental justice are in many ways innately linked to social justice concerns, just as components of social justice education are intrinsic to outdoor experiential education (Warren 2005:90). Outdoor education, while already placing students in a very different setting than that which they know reveals and illuminates the unfamiliar. In this manner programs with outdoor exposure encourage participants to deconstruct their personal and cultural beliefs and customs (Dumond, Mcdonald & Ungar 2005: 332). Outdoor education is an ideal milieu in which the breaking of barriers is possible, and with strong potential for facilitating discussions of and making change regarding social justice concerns. As educator Bruce Matthews notes, outdoor education must take action to address growing social concerns, as it unites universal themes and “common interest in finding ways to live equitably and sustainably on the earth” (Matthews 1992:4).

In this project I intend to focus on the potential intersections between environmental and social justice which can be located within the realms of outdoor education. I am curious about the possibilities within the field of outdoor experiential education to impact a participant’s interest in and agency to affect change in social justice issues. The working research question which I’ve begun to investigate seeks to analyze how outdoor education programs can be used to help educate and raise awareness of social justice issues among participants. Solely based on current reading, I predict that involvement in an outdoor program has the potential to encourage participants to take action once they have returned to their home communities; however, participation in itself can enforce bias and further stratify communities.

Choices of leisure activity can be highly racialized decisions. Leisure, itself, assumes the basic privilege of class, and thus economic stability can be a basic determiner for participation in outdoor pursuits (Martin 2004). When group dynamics of your race/class/ethnicity/religion tell you that wilderness is a place for rich white people, suddenly outdoor activities become an act of transgression, rather than an opportunity to de-stress (Martin 2004:528-530, Ungar 2003, Wall 2005: 518). These biases, when transposed from of leisure choice into the realms of outdoor education, become issues of efficacy, value-centering, appropriateness, and culturally resonant programming. Knowledge of cultural differences, varying definitions of and responses to wilderness exposure, and prevalent biases within the field of outdoor pursuits become vital to the facilitation of successful outdoor activities (Warren 1998).

I intend to tackle this fairly large topic by breaking down my research question into thematic pieces. My strategy is to look at the question from four main areas, and then look at the individual components of those four areas. As suggested by my research question, the four main projects making up my work will be defining the outdoors in outdoor education, coming to an understanding of what outdoor education itself specifically means, defining social justice work, and finally looking at the intersection of outdoor education with social justice work. Each of my other four thematic ideas will be broken down in a similar manner in order to better envision my project. My research will be largely library-based, though I know of several Portland area organizations based around alternate views of outdoor pursuits with whom I would love to be in contact. However, any field-observation would be entirely secondary to my library work.

Though it may not seem so in the midst of our Western post-modern hyper-technological world of mass consumption; humans are innately and eternally connected to the natural world. The simple gathering of food, in whatever circumstance this occurs, illustrates both the impossibility of functioning entirely removed from nature, and the universal and cross-cultural resonance of such a connection (Matthews 1993). Regardless of what John Locke and Thomas Hobbes had to say about it, our social contract has only allowed us to ignore the state of nature, not remove ourselves from true dependency upon nature. Defining nature, wilderness, the outdoors, or even the environment, all depend upon one’s social, cultural, and intellectual contexts (Eder 1996). I have only begun to attempt to navigate through the many definitions of wilderness and the outdoors, and in some respects the very definition houses the very same biases that I am endeavoring to deconstruct. These definitions also influence the situating and goals of outdoor education programs, and create a huge ideological and philosophical chasm between opportunities for outdoor exposure. Urban activities located in so called “working” environments, usually more focuses on environmental science learning, and wilderness exposure programs, located on supposedly virgin lands and more focused on psychological development and rehabilitation (Ungar 2003). The outdoor portion of my work will attempt to discuss the social and cultural context of nature/wilderness, the social and environmental impact of wilderness use, and some race/class/gender biases behind the idea of wilderness as applied in white upper middle class context.

The obvious hurdle in what I have suggested is the size and scope of my project. Even with my strategy to break down large ideas into progressively smaller chunks, I will still need to be working with several intersecting themes simultaneously. I could easily write my entire project on each of my four thematic bases, instead of attempting to engage them all at once. I am attempting to focus myself on the place for social justice work within outdoor education, and only delve into discussing the other component parts as necessary to define ideas and for clarity. My hope is that I have and will continue to be able to locate enough sources that look at two or three of my four main ideas, and take guidance from how previous scholars have attempted to synthesize similar information. I know that due to time constraints and a more realistic expectation of how I am able to use my time, I may decide to focus more specifically on several of my ideas. Also, I’ve noticed that the vast majority of my article sources on the topic of outdoor education come from the same periodical source. I am working to track down information from a wider variety of sources and collections, and look at sources based in alternative forms of media besides periodicals. I have had some success with accessing conference papers, transcriptions of academic presentations, government documents, statistical analyses, and others.

Attempting to define social justice work is also a very large and intimidating undertaking, and I struggle to find a logical place to begin. However, I believe that closer examinations of education for social justice will illuminate the theoretical bases behind my discussion of outdoor education. From reading and personal experience, I have the greatest knowledge and understanding of how outdoor activities function. My task is to expand my knowledge of the theories behind education and social justice work, and better unify the topics.

Scottish Preacher Michael Northcott wrote, “The wilderness rather than the consulting rooms of the professional therapist is said to provide the opportunity for modern individuals to escape from the selfist narcissism of their consumer-dominated existence and recover a sense of connection other beings…” (Northcott 2005:389). People worldwide turn to wilderness to try to regain a sense of humanity and connection, one devalued in the everyday humdrum existence of post-modern life (Sharpe 2005). It is my conviction that wilderness, or any outdoor activity can serve to help create a better more just humanity, one less bound by the realities of presupposition, bias, and hierarchy than that in which we find ourselves.

The Beginning

This is the brainchild of another Friday night spent working on my senior thesis. And some drinking, and some incredibly amazing Cuban food, but mostly thesis. I wanted a way to post my continuing progress on my last big academic project, and create a way to get feedback from all of you wonderful people out there who keep offering it. Though I'm at about the midpoint of this endevour (first full draft due two weeks from yesterday, I've written so far about 25 pages), any and all suggestions and help you can through at me would be greatly appreciated. Critique and criticisms likewise the same. If it doesn't make sense to you, it probably doesn't to my professors who will be reading it and probably like me a whole lot less. The biggest thing you can do for me, besides sending good good juju in my direction, is comment on the theoretical flow of my work: am I providing the appropriate and adequate documentation and support for the points that I'm trying to make...that sort of thing.

This project means a lot to me, but finishing it and getting on with my life means a WHOLE lot more.

Thanks in advance, for allowing your curiousity, productively procrastinating, or simply happening across the work that I'm trying to do.