Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T04:35:18.934Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An environmental ethic for outdoor education: dilemma and resolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

K. McRap
K. McRap*
Affiliation:
School of Education, Canberra College of Advanced Education
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Programs designed to promote the use of natural environments for leisure purposes need to be based on a sound and justifiable environmental ethic. This paper attempts to develop such an ethic. The general and basic ecological attitude, arguments relating to the need for human survival, other arguments which relate to human interests such as the need for beauty, recreation and scientific endeavours and utilitarian arguments relating to the needs of future generations are examined and are seen as being morally and practically inadequate.

The only justifiable environmental ethic is seen as one which has. as its central concept, the interdependent natural community in which the interests of all individual members of the community (including the interests of human beings) are regarded as secondary to the good of the total community. In the ethic, humans protect the natural environment because the entities of nature are “fellow-travellers”, members of the same moral community.

Type
Research Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 2 - 7
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

References

Blackstone, W.T. (ed.), Philosophy and Environmental Crisis, University of Georgia Press, Athens, 1974.Google Scholar
Brooks, P., Speaking for Nature, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1980.Google Scholar
Commoner, B., The Closing Circle: nature, man and technology. Bantam, New York, 1972.Google Scholar
Darling, F.F., Wilderness and Plenty, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1970.Google Scholar
Ebling, F., Biology and Ethics, Academic Press, London, 1969.Google Scholar
Goodpaster, K. and Sayre, K. (eds.), Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, 1979.Google Scholar
Leopold, A., A Sandy County Almanac, Ballantine, New York, 1970.Google Scholar
Marsh, G.P., Man and Nature, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1965.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers, N., The Sinking Ark, Pergamon Press, New York, 1979.Google Scholar
Nash, R., Wilderness and the American Mind, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1967.Google Scholar
Passmore, J., Man's Responsibility for Nature, Scribner's, New York, 1974.Google Scholar
Schwartz, W., Voices for the Wilderness, Ballantine, New York, 1969.Google Scholar