Customer Reviews

Earth Education: A New Beginning

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Everyone working in the field of environmental education should read this book as a foundation for methodology, philosophy and the true spirit of why we do what we do.

Steve Van Matre is a visionary, with a deeply rooted commitment to teaching children how to love nature and act responsibly in it's honor. His books create an understanding that EE is not just science education, nor is it just holding hands and singing the garden song. EE is about a relationship with and responsibility to the ecological systems and their magical life giving, spirit renewing mysteries.

This book provides insight into the author's sometimes abrasive, usually entertaining and sometimes painfully honest view of how EE should and should not occur. Van Matre gives simple descriptions of natural systems and the educational process called earth education.

Earth education is a series of carefully crafted outdoor learning experiences with lots of theatrics, teaching tools materials, and clearly defined outcomes. The author strongly protests "activity" based programs like Project Wild and Project Learning Tree, and the idea of integrating EE into classroom curriculum is without value or success in his view. Van Matre's program promotes immersion into nature, carefully designed learning experiences using hooks and experiential activities with goals and teasers that inspire children to return and learn more.

Van Matre's ecological concepts, teaching style and strong opinions are a foundation for many environmental programs world wide. I see his influence within programs that don't realize they are using his materials.

Not only is this book inspirational and timeless, but an important reminder to not give in to all the pressures that would cause us to integrate, white wash, compromise and otherwise lose track of our goals.

I can't totally bash this book because Van Matre did have several ideas that should be incorporated into Environmental Ed (especially 'avoid twenty questions' and 'removing disguises'). But it was so tiring to slog through his ego trip. The first chapter does nothing but denigrate every existing EE program that Van Matre could think of. Nothing is good enough for him, and he doesn't even allow that many of these programs do have positive points as well as negative. The second chapter basically says, "thank goodness I have come along, for you were all wandering blind without me!" Finally, starting in about the third chapter, VM starts to expound on his ideas. Scattered throughout are distracting anecdotes that, taken together with the first 2 chapters, only make him appear more egotistical. He included several cute gnomish illustrations and fancy fonts, so the book does have some visual appeal. However, for an environmentalist, there was one thing about his book that puzzled me... Why did he leave a 2 1/2 inch margin along one side of the text? To make the book look longer? Many times there is just one illustration in this huge blank space. Shouldn't an environmentalist be trying to save paper by using as much of a page's surface as possible? If you are interested in EE, I think you should definitely read this book AFTER the first 2 chapters. But don't bother buying it if you don't have to. Look for it in a library first. Failing that, buy it used for as cheap as possible.

I borrowed this book from a highschool teacher while I was teaching grade 5 in an international school, hoping to find some new ways to get across to students important aspects of environmental systems. What I came away with was a totally new and oh so comfortable way of looking at the world. More importantly, I was teaching it to children in a way that I hope will stay with them forever. Environmental education always seemed too clinical for me. Here was something that resonated and created a paradigm shift in me as a person sharing this planet with countless other forms of life. It is a view I now show my own children who happily express their wonder and reverence for nature. Thank you for this book!! I have recommended it to others and would love for it to be required reading by all educators.

If you can overlook the illustrations of black-eyed mushroom-headed gnomes (what's that about, anyway?) and "in-your-face" style, this book has a few good gems. I wish the author didn't seem to clobber everything around him, and my gut says it shouldn't take well over 300 pages to convey the information, but in the end I think this book will probably have some effect on my nature-education volunteer work.