ABSTRACT
As we learn more about the extent of the ecological crisis, it becomes easier to recognize that the forms of knowledge privileged in our public schools and universities are not contributing to the enlightenment and general progress of humankind-this continues to be the litany of educators ranging from elementary teachers to university professors and presidents. Rather, the high-status forms of knowledge promoted through our educational institutions (particularly our most prestigious universities) contribute to the disintegration of previously self-reliant cultural groups, to widespread chemical changes in the life-processes of the earth’s ecosystems, and to the development of technologies and centralized systems of control that further degrade natural habitats already under stress. Moreover, the growing dominance of the high-status knowledge now equated with modernity in Third World countries can be traced directly to the Western form of education that their elite classes have been exposed to. Why are the connections between the globalization of Western forms of knowledge and the ecological crisis not more widely recognized within the public school and university communities? The answer can, in part, be found in the cultural ideology (which can also be understood as a culturally specific epistemology) that is encoded and reproduced in the language of these institutions, which serves both as the basis of knowledge in the various disciplines, and as giving moral legitimization to efforts to replace the traditional forms of knowledge that coevolved within bioregions with modern ways of understanding and technical expertise. The nature of this guiding and legitimating ideology, as well as why it should be abandoned in favor of the conceptual and moral orientation of cultural bioconservatism, will be the main focus of this chapter. Examining the connections between high-status knowledge, the globalization of hyperconsumerism and the hyper-technologizing of relationships, as well as the connections between cultural bioconservatism and the renewing of ecologically centered cultural practices, represents another way of framing the educational issues that should be part of any discussion of bioregionalism.
