Farming and our relationships to animals

What do we owe animals if anything? Gene Baur, the president of Farm Sanctuary, will be coming to Penn State to give a presentation on this issue on February 22nd. Farm Sanctuary "works to end cruelty to farm animals and promotes compassionate living through rescue, education and advocacy. We envision a world where the violence that animal agriculture inflicts upon people, animals and the environment has ended, and where instead we exercise values of compassion." The presentation is sponsored by the PSU Vegetarian Club.


We will have the opportunity to meet with Gene on February 23 at 10:30 in a room to be announced. Mark your calendars.

More tasty water for my bottle

Today I went back to the Chambers water bottle filling fountain. It made me happy to be there.

So in all of my glee, I filled up my Freeze Thaw Cycles bottle with water. [@ Freeze Thaw you can buy a reused and recycled bike to go with your reusable bottle and reduce your carbon footprint and shop locally!]

And look how much waste people have saved by using this machine. 2318 bottles! Wow. That's a lot of petroleum saved from bottle production, transport to consumption, transport to down- or recycling or to a landfill, social problems avoided, and potential pollution reduced. Reduction is the first of the ecological R's.

This might actually be pattern solving (pdf). Hmmmm.

When The Onion wins...

...they really win.

WASHINGTON—Wishing to dispose of the empty plastic container, and failing to spot a recycling bin nearby, an estimated 30 million Americans asked themselves Monday how bad throwing away a single bottle of water could really be.

"It's fine, it's fine," thought Maine native Sheila Hodge, echoing the exact sentiments of Chicago-area resident Phillip Ragowski, recent Florida transplant Margaret Lowery, and Kansas City business owner Brian McMillan, as they tossed the polyethylene terephthalate object into an awaiting trash can. "It's just one bottle. And I'm usually pretty good about this sort of thing."

"Not a big deal," continued roughly one-tenth of the nation's population.

What is the most important thing?

Watch this and at least enjoy the sentiment.



Now ask yourself, "What is the purpose of education?" and watch the video again.

I wonder, if we have already past the point the video seems to think we are yet to reach.

Family erosion by the market. Check.

Environmental degradation. Check.

Money as the motivator of modern life? Dewey wrote about it more than 80 years ago in Individualism Old & New when he wrote about "the pecuniary man." Jesus railed against it with the money changers in the temple.

In all of the wrappings of the No Child Left Behind Act and "standards" this and "accountability" that and "global economy" here and "competitiveness" there shouldn't we ask, "Who do I serve? How does what I offer people through my role as a teacher help them be themselves in their communities? Can we do this without deluding ourselves?"

Fun ideas for making new items out of old ones

The Boston Globe had a cool photo slide show of used items turned into new ones, like a fruit basket made of sterilized chopsticks. While making new items out of reclaimed ones isn't a novel idea, I always find it refreshing to see what other people are doing in terms of making new out of old.

Will Penn State be one of the STARS?

The American Association for the Advancement for Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE...what a mouthful) is starting to pilot its STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System) program. According to AASHE, the program's goals are:

• Provide a framework for understanding sustainability in all sectors of higher education.
• Enable meaningful comparisons over time and across institutions using a common set of measurements developed with broad participation from the campus sustainability community.
• Create incentives for continual improvement toward sustainability.
• Facilitate information sharing about higher education sustainability practices and performance.
• Build a stronger, more diverse campus sustainability community.

I am both very excited and a tad worried about this. I am excited because this might give us some really meaningful information about programs. However, standards and such can turn into some pretty ugly political sticks. I just like to keep in the back of my mind what "standards" adopted from "a common set of measurement" have done to teachers and students in light of the No Child Left Behind act. I'm cautiously optimistic though.

Guess what. Penn State is one of the early sites for evaluation.

As national and global attention to environmental sustainability increases, many in higher education, industry and government are unsure of how to actually quantify and measure progress in this new area. Penn State is taking a leadership role as a charter participant in the STARS (Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System) program, a new sustainability tracking system developed by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). This year, data will be collected in key sustainability "credit areas," spanning student life, curriculum, research, operations, planning, administration and outreach.

"STARS will provide Penn State with a key missing link in our efforts," said Erik Foley, director of the Campus Sustainability Office, "comprehensive baseline sustainability performance data. AASHE developed the tool over three years and tested it on 70 institutions, so we feel it is a well-tested, rigorous tool for supporting Penn State?s sustainability efforts."

As a charter participant in STARS, Penn State will have an improved ability to measure progress, make better informed resource allocation decisions, benchmark performance with other similar institutions and be a leader in the development of sustainability metrics. Early participation also will position Penn State to be an active contributor to the evolution of STARS, which is expected to evolve as universities continuously expand the adoption of innovative sustainable practices.

Read the whole story here. I really hope this goes well.

A song about "development": Gaon Chodab Nahi

This video was forwarded to us from Madhu Suri Prakash in Penn State's Educational Theory and Policy program (and my adviser). The YouTube host explains that "the song describes the present day exploitation of tribal land and forests in the name of development." Development, that chimera of "progress."



Madhu recently went to Bhutan to work with them on developing an integrated educational system for Gross National Happiness instead of Gross Domestic Product. Imagine that: a school system that seeks to help people's conviviality and economic, social, and ecological sustainability.