Presenting cultural landscapes in the Anthropocene: Evaluating educational textbooks as a driver of biocultural homogenization

Background/Question/Methods

While every city and community has its own identity and local ecosystem, the formalized educational content of textbooks is not designed to vary with the diverse and heterogeneous environments in which it is taught.  Further, as environmental education has moved to predominantly indoor settings, textbooks have an increased influence on student exposure to the environment.  In the United States the textbook industry represents a $4 billion/year market with four dominant publishing companies.  The states of Texas, California and Florida form 30% of the market and publishers tend to compete for these markets by creating textbook content particular to these states.  The net result is that the educational requirements set by these three states are often found in textbooks printed elsewhere, exaggerating the trend to underrepresent local instances of cultural and biological diversity.  Various sub-disciplines of ecology have made efforts to incorporate the “human component” into ecological studies, as well as to provide tools to evaluate the sustainability of their varied lifestyle practices.  An evaluation of 2^nd-8^th grade public school textbooks used in the state of Texas was conducted to determine local diversity representations and underlying values.

 Three of five available textbooks in the state of Texas were selected for this study and analyzed accumulatively and by grade.  All illustrations and key figures in the text were surveyed for represented plant types, habitats and ecoregions to determine i) the extent of local and cosmopolitan representation, ii) habitat types and environments represented, iii) presented relationship of humans with the environment. Illustrations were evaluated using indices of ecoregion, domestication status, habitat type (natural or anthropogenic), continental origin. In order to determine the value underlying the presentation of environmental content, Keller’s index of values (1996) was used to determine trends of perceived value of biodiversity (utilitarian, naturalistic, scientific, aesthetic, symbolic).

Results/Conclusions

Images of children represented in cultural landscapes predominantly appeared in playgrounds or indoor settings. Further, textbooks could be grouped in two general categories: I) those following the “pristine ecosystem” model and II) those incorporating anthropogenic landscapes. Type II more frequently discussed sustainable and non-sustainable relationships between humans and the environment whereas Type I textbooks tended to represent humans as having only negative impacts upon the environment. If we wish to develop more sustainable practices in schoolchildren mindsets, it is vital that cultural landscapes and biodiversity values encompass sustainable human relationships to the environment, and local instances of the environment in which children are living.