“We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.”
Margaret Mead
Introduction
Landscape art can be used to observe the transition from a pastoral world through to industrialization in order to illuminate the effects of modernization as it ultimately has led to the Anthropocene, the debated epoch we currently find ourselves in due to human-caused climate change. By using historical landscape paintings, students can look at a time before photographs and digital satellite imagery to see how the world started changing. From the picturesque to pastoral to the sublime, landscape art of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries gives us sweeping vistas to evaluate and chronicle how imperialism, colonialism, and the Industrial Revolution shaped our current condition. The social and political critiques by the artists and the evaluations of modern day observers allow for these examples of life long ago to be signals of the ecological dangers that were ahead. This unit explores three essential questions: What messages do artists convey with their work? What is the relationship between people and climate change? How can students become change agents? Through Notice and Wonder activities and learning about gamification in order to create their own game, students will become environmental activists equipped to spread the messages of sustainability.
In this curriculum unit, students will grow their understanding of climate change, the effect humans have had and continue to have on the environment, and begin to understand how and where they can act. This learning will take place against the backdrop of a digital game where the aesthetic is landscape paintings depicting the evolution of said climate crisis via industrialization. The purpose of this unit is to help students feel connected to their environment in a way that, even though they may be culpable (yes, even at their young age), makes them feel capable of fighting for a more sustainable way of living. Ultimately, students will create a point and click game of their own to showcase what they have learned in terms of climate change culprits and sustainability options in an effort to challenge their cohorts and present solutions to climate problems.
As a teacher for over 20 years I have worked with students whose daily priorities center more around physical safety and food security, rather than more abstract questions such as not using too much plastic and rising sea levels. Everyday precarity makes environmental problems feel less urgent, less of a teaching priority, nor has it always aligned with what the district standards dictate. However, as a person interested in making the world a better place, current environmental concerns create a mandate to inform children about climate change in the hopes that I can make it feel like not only a problem, but a problem for which their actions could be a part of the solution.
Over the years, my different classes took field trips to Fairmount Water Works, an old water pump station for the city that now acts as an educational center. We watched films such as The Lorax, Arctic Tale, and Wall E and thought and wrote critically about what we saw. We asked what we could do about the grim forecasts stemming from decades, if not centuries, of poorly managed commercial, industrial, and technological growth and waste. We became change agents and made posters to inform our school peers about the dangers of litter and leaving the lights on or the water running. We even sponsored animals whose habitats, and subsequently numbers in the wild, were being affected by climate change. These experiences served to build conscientiousness in the next generation. This unit endeavors to have a similar effect.
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