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Given that environmental education is the most prominent and profound example of community outreach in the Osa, this chapter details several events that illuminate Costa Rica’s environmental agenda in practice and the significance for children, families, and practitioners entangled within that practice. Environmental education has been among the most effective strategies used by conservationists to disseminate ecological awareness and create young activists based upon the terms set by the environmentalist and scientific communities themselves. The case of El Progreso reveals how the most currently active NGO on environmental-community outreach, Fundación Corcovado, navigates this educational endeavor and what the degree of community acceptance (or rejection) means for environmental education as a tactic of conservationists. The case of Dos Brazos details how games are used to encourage participation and thus motivate a certain type of eco-citizenship. Regarding Puerto Jiménez and the Peninsula at large, I provide various examples of educational initiatives, and what their success or failure means for the momentum of environmentalism in the Peninsula. From Paolo Freire’s progressive pedagogy to the nuances of “ecopedagogy,” growing out of the institutionalized concerns for sustainability and learning, the trajectory of progressive education throughout Latin America finds common ground with environmental education, and these cases situated in a

“marginalized” zone within the greening Costa Rican republic demonstrate the stakes for those new recruits into the eco-mentality proposed nationwide. This example of

environmentalism in practice, beyond the concerns of what does or does not work, examines how pedagogy operates as a strategy of conservation politics.

Figure 6.1. COTORCO and an environmental education event in Puerto Jiménez.

Just as Costa Rica’s green reputation should be scrutinized, given the amount of conflict and controversy surrounding the history of land use, so should the processes by which environmental education operates be interrogated to better understand the actual strategies of environmentalism in the Osa. New initiatives in environmental education mark shifts in the practice of both pedagogy and education policy. In one sense, activism becomes more democratic by opening channels of dialogue and engagement, and in another sense, the education initiatives reinforce the power of conservationist ideology. The young Costa Rican mind is the target of environmental education, activism with a certain

definition of ecological awareness meant to create the type of consciousness necessary for the imagined future and place environmentalists seek to create. Importantly, this is not a matter of the “dynamic” NGO or state acting upon the “static” student body, as students and other community members actively negotiate, accept, and reject the proposed education.

The most noteworthy ethnographic study of environmental education in Costa Rica is Nicole Blum’s thesis (2006). Maintaining the focus on Costa Rican environmental education, her subsequent book (2012) and articles (2008a; 2008b; and 2009) are

supportive of the idea that the locality for such education constitutes an assemblage of interactions and negotiations “embedded in social, economic, and political relationships”

(Blum 2006: 207). Other ethnographic work on Costa Rica (Vivanco 2006) explores similar questions concerning the implications of environmental advocacy, community outreach, and the encounter between children and interest groups from elsewhere. An ethnographic perspective takes advantage of qualitative analysis and knowledge gained from an intimate understanding of the thoughts and actions of practitioners, families, and students. This chapter builds on such work by discussing how environmental education constructs a particular type of Costa Rican ecological steward that fits the nationalist narrative that popularly proclaims all Costa Ricans to be environmentalists.

While facets of environmental education are included in the state curriculum, the way lessons are taught in practice is largely due to teacher discretion and training. There has been a state-implemented interest in environmental education since the seventies (Blum 2006: 33), but the national environmental education office was formally established in 1993 (Ibid: 78), and state-led initiatives have been notoriously ineffective (75). Given this, there is a great effort on behalf of NGOs and others in the private sector to influence Costa Rican environmental education. Mirroring many environmental efforts in Costa Rica,

environmental education is entangled with the international scientific community, disseminating the Costa Rican green image, seeking donors and support, and creating a platform that will support (eco)tourism.

Blum identifies two styles of environmental education in practice: a strict science-based approach that promotes protectionism, and a more integrated politico-economic approach that emphasizes social/natural interrelations (Ibid: 135), including ethnographic examples (154). Although, relative to other areas of Costa Rica, programs in the Osa encourage community participation, empowerment, and explanations of regional

social/natural interrelations (Ibid: 82), the implementation is still difficult. The intentions, as many educators outline, are to include socio-political understandings of place and

interrelations with the surroundings, but this is often poorly implemented and not helped by lack of interest from both local teachers and families.

From Puerto Jiménez to El Progreso, resources are poured into initiatives that fail to gain traction because of lack of interest, lack of communication, and lack of trust. Boxes of

unused lesson plans and activity booklets in the FC and OC offices attest to a similar disappointment from the perspective of environmentalists. Many NGO workers, foreign and local alike, say this is due to lack of interest and lack of training for teachers. Although there are some environmental education guidelines in the state curriculum, these are quite general and whether or not they are taught is normally left to teacher discretion. Many educators and activists denied that such guidelines even exist. In practice, what lessons are taught and how they are taught – especially in the Osa – is largely due to what the teacher feels comfortable with, what she believes will work with students, and the relevant training she has received. As much was related to me by the teacher in Dos Brazos, who, well-versed in environmental education and purposes for conservation in Costa Rica, welcomed La Leona Lodge and Roni, a young environmentalist from San José. Without any training in environmental education, some teachers have found it difficult to employ lessons and activities delivered by the NGOs. Furthermore, teachers are quite busy as it is, and many are simply not interested in adding lessons or taking an environmentalist role within their classroom.

The tensions imbibed within conservation and development politics are evident through the occasions of environmental education and the language of many students.

While teaching English and leading group activities at the Puerto Jiménez library, I prompted students to draw a picture of anything they wanted. One student drew a militarized monkey seeking revenge on the human hunters. The student showed me the scene with the rainforest backdrop, the armed monkey firing at hunters, and explained this was justified revenge for years of hunting. Other children joked about making birds and iguanas into a soup, during one cleanup, and then quickly assured us it was a joke. When asked during one festival why people should conserve biodiversity, one student eagerly responded, “so the tourists have something to see.”

The chapter begins with a review of the literature concerning the anthropology of education and relevant social theory on pedagogy, knowledge, embodied experience, and the notion of awareness. The next section, introduces an individual Costa Rican educator with alternative styles of pedagogy informed by his political views and artistic lifestyle – exemplary of a successfully embodied pedagogical experience infused with activism. The section on environmental education in practice details the El Progreso festival for

environmental education as a typical event to pursue outreach and the dissemination of environmental awareness. The following section, highlights knowledge as a political field of tensions. I argue that pedagogy in practice is a negotiation of historically situated political actors, and the “success” or “failure” of strategies implemented are greatly informed by their embedded contexts. While environmental education is often a patronizing imposition of values, there are also liberating qualities in knowledge and learning that mirror developments in liberation pedagogy and the work of Paolo Freire.

The ideology and practice of environmental education do inform a type of

environmentality, but as educators like Freire clarify, education can act as resistance, not only oppression.

Framing Environmental Education

Some basic education has a strong environmental inflection that is similar to environmental discourse in general and draws on classic discussions on what education means; but what is distinctive about the Osa, perhaps Costa Rica at large, is the increasing trend and insistence on environmental education as a teaching strategy and an essential type of knowledge that many (e.g., activists and policy-makers) view as critical towards the future of both national education and environmental activism. One of the best-known direct engagements concerning education, within the history of European intellectual thought, is Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education (1762). Much like his work in The Social Contract (1762), Rousseau presents a romantic idea of the human, born inherently good, only to be later corrupted by society. The distinction between society and individual, along with the importance of an education system that nurtures and empowers the individual, would later influence social theorists in the Americas, such as John Dewey (1916; 1938) and Paulo Freire (1970). Rousseau promotes the idea of education as an active learning experience where the child is an engaged participant and not merely a passive receiver of knowledge, and even amongst more recent contributors, the influence of Rousseau is evident.

A pragmatist, Dewey (1938) echoes Rousseau’s call for a more democratic approach to education that emphasizes the student’s personal experience in the world.

Dewey explains, “Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life” (Dewey 1916: 2). Building on his belief that education is critical to social life, Dewey argues that it is both a necessity and in the best interests of all for the immature person (child) to become a mature person (adult), and that education, generally speaking, is the process through which this transformation takes place (Dewey 1916: 2-3). Identifying a distinction between traditional and progressive education (Dewey 1938: 1), Dewey explains the principles of progressive education as, the “cultivation of individuality,” “free activity,”

“learning through experience,” “means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal,”

“making the most of the opportunities of present life,” and “acquaintance with a changing world” (Dewey 1938: 5-6). For Dewey, it is the link between experience and learning that makes progressive education superior to traditional.

Importantly, the individuality cultivated through experience in Dewey’s progressive education model parallels the nurturing of a sense of freedom within the individual. It is here, with the idea of freedom and liberation as central concerns for education, that Freire’s work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), offers some similarity. Freire identifies

education, in its general and traditional sense, as an act of “depositing” knowledge, or what Freire calls “the ‘banking’ concept of education” (Freire 1970: 72). Freire explains, “In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider

themselves knowledgeable upon those who they consider to know nothing” (Ibid). Freire is writing against this type of pedagogy because of the hierarchical relationship established that represses the individuality of the student. Drawing on the distinction between an individual and society, Freire argues, “Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator” (Freire 1970: 75).

Freire’s critique of education is meant to expose oppression and to offer a path to liberation – a more democratic form of pedagogy.

Freire’s view of liberation is based upon a romantic and humanistic conception of the human, an individual whose potential should be realized within an ideal situation of more egalitarian power relations. Freire explains, “Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world”

(Freire 1970: 79). In contrast to the banking concept, Freire proposes the “problem-posing”

style of education, which leads to a liberated individual. Freire argues, “Liberating

education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information,” and creates an active dialogue between students and teachers, breaking down the former authoritarian hierarchy of the banking concept, and fostering a sense of freedom for the students (1970: 79-80).

Here, exercising consciousness and cognitive ability through interaction within the world leads to senses of liberation and individuality, lacking in the education system that Freire critiques. Freire was drawing contrast to an existing approach that did not empower all citizens but only members of the ruling class.

Other political philosophers, such as Bertrand Russell (1932), have struggled with the distinction between the individual as its own free entity and the individual citizen as a member of society. Russell identifies the aim of state education as fostering “national cohesion within the state” (1932: 14), and warns that teaching “patriotism of the nationalist type” acts as “a form of mass hysteria” (1932: 97).⁵⁹ Russell writes these words during the tumultuous early 20^th century in Europe when nationalism took a particularly jingoistic, dangerous, and xenophobic form; while Latin American nationalism has historically consisted of more subversive and revolutionary leaders. He commits to the importance of education and using the intellect to critique forces like fascism and propaganda. Similar to the work of Dewey and Freire, Russell supports a progressive and liberated pedagogy, with the caveat that learning a sense of social cohesion promotes political stability in a moment when Europe was heading for catastrophe – later realized as World War II. Russell

describes the effect of general education upon students: “The pupil is not considered for his [or her] own sake, but as a recruit: the educational machine is not concerned with his [or her] welfare, but with ulterior political purposes” (1932: 167). Here, Russell argues that the general education system operates towards its own political ends rather than for the welfare of its students. Additionally, he incorporates the concerns with citizenship and nationalism,

59Russell describes citizens as persons who “co-operate” and are “conceived by governments [as] persons who admire the status quo and are prepared to exert themselves for its preservation” (1932: 4). The education of the citizen, Russell argues, is necessary until the world becomes peaceful enough for the individual to be more completely nourished. Russell asks the question throughout his work: “Can the fullest individual development be combined with the necessary minimum of social coherence” (1932: 166).

developing the understanding that the style of pedagogy creates particular types of members of the nation and always acts with some political aim.

The anthropology of learning inherits these debates over a liberated education reflecting active cognitive practice. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger’s individual works (Lave 1988; Chaiklin and Lave 1996; Wenger 1998) along with their joint project (Lave and Wenger 1991) are among the most prominent examples of the anthropology of learning. The process central to Lave and Wenger’s book, legitimate peripheral

participation, is explained as a “situated activity,” where “learners inevitably participate in communities of practitioners and that the mastery of knowledge and skill requires

newcomers to move toward full participation in the socio-cultural practices of a

community” (1991: 29). A sense of community cohesion is reiterated as an outcome of education. Echoing Bourdieu (1977, 1990), they continue: “Legitimate peripheral participation is proposed as a descriptor of engagement in social practice that entails learning as an integral constituent” (1991: 35). Students actively engage in a particular practice, and that practice develops into a representation of what teachers or experts call knowledge. Additionally, a sense of self is integral to this process: “Development of identity is central to the careers of newcomers in communities of practice, and thus

fundamental to the concept of legitimate peripheral participation” (1991: 115), we notice a particular type of person enacted within a group through learning.

Questioning what experience does on both a cognitive and social level is central to Lave and Wenger’s work. They explain the usefulness of their phenomenological

framework: “The notion of participation thus dissolves dichotomies between cerebral and embodied activity, between contemplation and involvement, between abstraction and experience: persons, actions, and the world are implicated in all thought, speech, knowing, and learning” (Lave and Wenger 1991: 52). Importantly, Lave and Wenger situate the phenomena of learning as a practice, rather than an objectified thing, that appears from a set of relations and interactions between the individual student and the structures at play. They explain, “Knowing is inherent in the growth and transformation of identities and it is

located in relations among practitioners, their practice, the artifacts of that practice, and the social organization and political economy of communities of practice” (Lave and Wenger 1991:122). The result of both cognitive and experiential processes at work, knowledge of

ecological stewardship, for example, is most illuminated by ethnographic studies that reveal the socially embedded aspects of its everyday practice. Of the other ethnographies to engage with cognition in practice, Paul Willis’ (2000) work explains how kinship relations are integral to the creation of identity as a historically located process vis-à-vis labor.

Nicholas de Genova (2005) addresses the importance of ethnographic “dialogue,” and traces Freire’s pedagogy, which advises engaged interaction, not top-down education (23-25).

This discussion not only addresses the anthropology of learning and questions of embodiment, but also cognitive anthropology. Maurice Bloch (2012) reminds scholars that anthropological research together with cognitive sciences produces newer valuable

questions that seek to explain both the role of the mind in everyday life and what each discipline offers the other (2012: 12). Such an interdisciplinary inquiry introduces the problem of the “embodied mind” (Varela et al. 1993), which is a helpful analytic for understanding how cognitive science contributes to (and is also influenced by) studying an individual’s everyday interactions with the world, with great reflection upon

phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty. Varela et al. explain, “For Merleau-Ponty, as for us, embodiment has this double sense: it encompasses both the body as a lived, experiential structure and the body as the context or milieu of cognitive mechanisms” (1993: xvi). Like Bloch, Varela et al. want to build a connection between studies of the mind and brain to the study of human experience (what Bloch refers to as anthropology). Embodiment in this sense, alongside Bourdieu’s notion of habitus (1977), is a helpful way to view the practice of Costa Rican environmentalism (Johnson and Clisby 2009), and to, more broadly, understand the interactions between inhabitants and environment. Varela et al.’s approach to cognition considers “cognition as embodied action” (1993: xx), and the authors propose the term “enactive” (Ibid) to describe the process by which the subject creates oneself through active engagement with the world. Such concerns with cognition and experience as mutually constituting processes inform this discussion of learning and education by refocusing our attention on how environmental education actually works.

Returning to Freire, the matter of a liberating pedagogy has had some influence upon education policies, taking the work beyond its place as radical critique within political philosophy literature. Moacir Gadotti (1996, 2004, 2008), among the most prominent of

Brazilian scholars to follow Freire, developed the concept “ecopedagogy” to propose a critical education initiative aiming at sustainable development and the protection of Earth’s resources. Gadotti, as a member of both the Instituto Paulo Freire (IPF) and the UN

Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, advocated for ecopedagogy which grew from Rio de Janeiro’s Earth Charter (1992), including Agenda 21 (1992), and the

Brundtland Report (1987). Gadotti used the occasion of the Earth Summit to advance his

Brundtland Report (1987). Gadotti used the occasion of the Earth Summit to advance his