ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we’ll examine how modernist discourses structured by centric thinking and a logic of domination also create our assumptions and experiences of gender, and especially what this means in terms of boys’ and girls’ different experiences of education and schooling. This chapter is the first of three chapters that look at how EcoJustice Education helps us to think differently-more deeply from a cultural ecological analysis-about social justice issues as they play out in schooling. We’ll be delving into historical processes in order to trace the ways specific cultural ways of thinking-the root metaphors and discourses we’ve been discussing-are at the heart of all sorts of domination among people, and how these link to ideas and attitudes leading to environmental degradation as well. These chapters look explicitly at how schooling (though we may think of it as benign or essentially beneficial) has been used as a means of perpetuating social and ecological violence. And, we’ll also be looking at educational sites as the location of important challenges to these forms of oppression.
