Science Education, Overconsumption, and Survival on a Finite Planet

Authors

  • Paul Connet

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v3i1.49

Keywords:

Science education, overconsumption, education abroad

Abstract

In my view, technological progress has raced ahead of social progress. At the press of a few buttons, we can talk with people all over the world, before we have mastered the art of communicating with the person who lives next door. We are racing faster and faster from parking lot to parking lot. We struggle and strive in order to sink into a couch and watch other people live on the other side of a plastic screen. We buy more and more objects to fill the void left by not building our lives around relationships. The nuclear family has become the ideal purchasing unit. The modern cathedral is the shopping mall and the road to hell is paved with good inventions! 

Perhaps the most dangerous invention we have ever come up with is a group of experts who all share the same value system, because it is difficult for anyone in that group to challenge the shared value. Indeed, the danger is in the fact that the shared value is invisible. It is not easy to question the way we see the world: our paradigms. We do not notice the lens we see through until it cracks or clouds a little. 

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Author Biography

Paul Connet

Paul Connett, Professor of Chemistry, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY 

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Published

1997-11-15

How to Cite

Connet, P. (1997). Science Education, Overconsumption, and Survival on a Finite Planet. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 3(1), 132–149. https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v3i1.49

Issue

Section

Section 2: Science and Technology Education in the Global Environment