[Coral-List] On Science Communication about Coral Reefs

[Raymond Clarke]

Yes,yes,yes to both Peter and Arianna.

Ray Clarke

On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 4:01 PM, Peter Sale <sale at uwindsor.ca> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list