[Coral-List] On Science Communication about Coral Reefs

Peter Sale sale at uwindsor.ca
Mon Jun 18 16:01:44 EDT 2018


Arianna,
You may be surprised, but as an academic, engaged my whole life in formal education I agree with you.  I’m not certain that everyone has to experience a coral reef in order to appreciate what we are doing to them, but I am sure everyone has to experience the natural world directly in one way or other, in order to have any empathy for or appreciation of it.  Our society is progressively moving people away from any direct engagement with nature.  I advocate for children eating dirt and climbing trees.  Snorkeling on a reef would be great but most people never get that opportunity.

Regrettably, even in ecology and other environmental sciences, direct field experience is being greatly reduced in many universities for reasons of cost & convenience, and because field work is considered so old-fashioned by those who want all environmental questions answered by some genetic test.

Peter Sale

From: arianna bucci <ariannabucci at yahoo.it>
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2018 3:45 PM
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov; Peter Sale <sale at uwindsor.ca>
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] On Science Communication about Coral Reefs

Dear Peter,

I could not agree more about your analysis. But in my personal opinion as an ex-researcher in marine bio, and a current educator in non-formal education and teacher (of marine bio), I think you (and the scientific community) are missing a fundamental thing: you cannot care about something you do not love, you cannot love something you don't know, and, most important here, you cannot know something you don't experience. And when I say experience, I mean it. Formal education is being traditionally highly focussed on the intellectual understanding of phenomena, and less on the whole experiential effects that, as humans/animals/living beings, they cause on us. We are dangerously getting apart from natural experiences.




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