From Footprints to Thoughtprints
Originally appears in the Winter 2010-2011 issue
You are chained inside a cave. You have been held immobile since birth, your gaze locked upon shadows projected on a wall. In such a condition, would you take these shadows for anything but the truth? This provocative question was put to us over two thousand years ago by the Greek philosopher Plato.
Now imagine you are somehow freed. You stand up. You look around at the burning fire and moving figures casting these shadows. For the first time, you recognize your once taken-for-granted “truth” as only one perspective among many.
What does this have to do with environmental education? Trade the cave for the classroom, the shadows for such notions as “natural resources”, and the shackles for a science-soaked curriculum. Plato’s allegory, then, gives us a powerful framework with which to discuss our practice.1
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