Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities (Nature Literacy)

Shared stories and an affection for the landscape around us is the glue that holds communities together. Knowledge gained from close interaction with real things you can touch, feel and see - gives learning more meaning. This marvelous, evocatively written short book provides a blueprint for a new approach to education that transcends the narrow and politically polarizing environmentalism of the 70s-90s by focusing attention on something everyone can agree on - the fundamental human need for a sense of place. In the sciences, math, and particularly in the arts and humanities, the value of place-based education is clearly explored and explained. Using local history as an entry point into American and world history makes kids motivated to learn and more engaged with their world. It also makes it concrete. Because many of the people and events that could be studied are barely mentioned in traditional texts, kids feel like they are discovering new things and are being let in on secret knowledge that they can participate in making, saving, shaping and recovering. The author lays out the argument clearly explaining that "in an increasingly globalized world, there are often pressures for communities and regions to subordinate themselves to the dominant economic models and to devalue their local cultural identity, traditions, and history in preference to a flashily marketed homogeneity." Sobel argues that "schools . . . should play a central role in the .... propagation of enlightened localism" and observes that "in a youth culture shaped by the mall, an education that values local distinctiveness . . . stands as a patch of wildness amid a growing expanse of tarmac." Whether this modest and emerging movement transforms education as we know it (it should), reading this book cannot fail to make anyone who loves community and wishes there was more of it - smile.

This must be one of the most important books on education that has come out in recent years. Beautifully rendered pedagogical background layered with examples of place-based education in action taken from city, suburban, and rural classrooms.This book has huge heart and soul and it can and should transform education in the United States and elsewhere.

This book is a Must Read for all educators, especially those struggling to maintain a focus on "what's good for kids" in a time of High-Stakes Testing and pressure to raise the test scores of economically disadvantaged students. Environmental educators, in particular, will find geat encouragement and much-needed ammunition to persuasively argue for adopting a "place-based" approach in their local schools. Bravo!!