Reading Response 13

I didn’t quite like this article. I didn’t understand the point of it, and I didn’t really understand quite who the audience would be. (I assume it’s biology teachers.) I’d go as far to say that it is completely useless. Peter McLean tries to explain in his article, The Need for Sustainability, that teachers must begin to teach their students about sustainability. While this is a noble cause, the article does not present any real solutions to the questions he raises. McLean, while citing various articles, brings up the fact that we as a race of beings are quite out of touch with nature. He then begins complaining about how this needs to change. He mentions very few ways that this can be accomplished, and instead leaves the burden of answering this problem to the reader. While there isn’t anything inherently wrong with this, the lack of consideration put into possible solutions makes it look cheap. My feeling is that McLean wrote this article last minute to fulfill some sort of tenure track requirement.

Sad, sloppy articles like this have no place in the academic community. Sure, increasing the amount of teaching in the area of sustainability would be good. How can we argue this? But finding ways to do so is where the trouble lies. Mr. McLean needs to find something he is passionate about before he writes, next time. I sent this article to my aunt, who is a biology teacher in Canada. She found it utterly arrogant. Her response was, “Duh. What sort of idiot posts this type of article? Of course we need to teach more about sustainability.” Every piece of information cited is something most high school students should know. Why, then, does the author feel it necessary to cite articles regarding these data, and to biology teachers none the less? It’s utter arrogance and a lack of true diligence.

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