The Hunger Games and the dystopian nature-disconnect

We've spent a lot of time in my literacy class talking about The Hunger Games and how teachers can harness its popularity to make literacy connections across the curriculum. Here are few general thoughts on The Hunger Games to add to the multitude of voices out there.

The Hunger Games as social commentary
The Hunger Games suggests a variety of social issues without going into great depth on any of them. At its heart, it is an action-packed hero’s quest told through the eyes of a strong-but-flawed heroine fighting to survive in a dystopian future. As New Yorker critic David Denby put it, “the reason for its success is simple: it makes teens feel both victimized and important”.

Nevertheless, The Hunger Games is a great starting point for exploring a variety of current environmental and social justice issues. Panem is post-climate change North America, so The Hunger Games’ popularity may partly be due to young peoples’ very real concerns about climate change. And there are parallels with the Occupy movement: Panem’s “99%” live in a state of ongoing environmental strife, food insecurity and resource depletion while the remaining few live in the Capitol, where the nation’s wealth and power are concentrated. Though there may not be a cause-and-effect relationship between The Hunger Games and the Occupy movement, there is certainly an element of art-imitating-life-imitating-art that is worth exploring with students.

The Capitol itself is a leisure dystopia. Living in idle wealth, its residents are obsessed with style and engaged in a never-ending game of physical one-up-manship, going so far as to disfigure themselves to attract notice. Oblivious to the food shortages in the rest of the country, residents eat rich foods and engage in planned bingeing and purging. All this behaviour is only slightly more extreme than our current celebrity culture and standards of beauty, and is a clear metaphor for the world food supply and Western overconsumption (and Hollywood is too close to the Capitol’s geographic location to be a coincidence).

It would be interesting to investigate with students the trend for dystopian settings in young adult fiction over the last few years. Dystopian fiction has typically become more popular in times of social crisis. For example, the triumvirate of twentieth century dystopian fiction (A Brave New World, Farenheit 451 and 1984) was written during the World War II/Cold War years.

The dystopian nature-disconnect
Most fictional dystopias are set in highly urban environments or ravaged wastelands, and even those that are set in relatively healthy landscapes isolate their characters from contact with the natural world, as in Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, where the countryside is the domain of the exiles. The Hunger Games is no different: the land has been wasted, resources have been depleted, citizens are prohibited from wandering freely in the forest and gates surround the districts to separate humans from their natural environment. Wild landscapes and the animals that inhabit them are perceived as dangerous.

Why is this such a common element in dystopian fiction? I think it’s because the primal connection humans have with the land is fundamentally incompatible with dystopian power structures. Beyond providing sustenance, nature has a healing and revitalizing power and is intrinsically linked to human freedom and happiness. Seen through the lens of the Western dualistic nature/culture paradigm, a dystopian superpower cannot not effectively control its subjects if the people have healthy relationships with the land, which is by definition wild and uncontrollable. Excluding nature’s light and beauty excludes hope, which enables control. Separating people from the place in which they live is necessary in dystopian worlds, because a return to nature would lead to rebellion and independence. The staging of the final battle in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (in which the Rebel Alliance finally succeeds in overthrowing the Galactic Empire) on the lush forest moon of Endor can be seen as an example of this. In The Hunger Games, this is played out through the heroine, Katniss Everdeen.

Katniss has a deep connection to the land, which has been fundamental to her survival throughout her life. As a young girl, the sight of a single dandelion changed Katniss’ life, inspiring her to hunt and forage to keep her family from starving and to provide healing medicines. Because these acts are illegal  all resources belong to the state, and wandering in the woods is forbidden  Katniss’ relationship with the land defines her as a rebel before the story even begins. Beyond the resources the woods provide, Katniss also finds existential freedom and relief there. This bond with the natural world and the vitality it gives her is in stark contrast to the dreary hopelessness of the other residents of her community, who remain caged within the district fences, and to the shallow, overconsumptive urbanity of the Capitol residents, who do not realize they are imprisoned by their luxury.

Once she enters the Hunger Games arena, it is Katniss’ skill as a forager, hunter and herbalist that enable her to survive. But beyond these superficial skills, I think it’s Katniss’ lifelong immersion in nature that gives her the self-assurance and freedom of mind needed to defy the Capitol and ultimately spark a rebellion against its repressive regime. It would be interesting to do a comparative study of other dystopian novels to explore the links across the genre between nature, rebellion and freedom.

Related to Katniss’ connection with the land, The Hunger Games offers another type of literacy beyond the millions of books its fans have read. As an expert expert hunter and forager, Katniss knows how to read signs in nature as efficiently as readers of books can decode symbols on a page. It is this reading of the land that gives her access to the physical world and enables her survival, and gives educators an opportunity to forge a curricular connection with environmental stewardship and traditional Native ways of knowing. Done with care, the popularity of The Hunger Games could be harnessed as a tool to develop interest in and validation of indigenous culture amongst both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth.

Stay tuned for a lesson plan incorporating The Hunger Games into the phys ed curriculum!

Bridging the gap: Interdisciplinarity in high school sciences and humanities teaching

*This is a paper I wrote for my biology class last month. I considered revising it to make it more blog friendly, but at this point in my career I'm more interested in what practicing teachers think of teaching an integrated curriculum than in giving advice on how to do it, so I've decided to publish it as is. Comments always appreciated!

Introduction
“We can educate a large proportion of our better minds so that they are not ignorant of imaginative experience, both in the arts and in science, nor ignorant neither of the endowments of applied science, of the remediable suffering of most of their fellow humans, and of the responsibilities which, once they are seen, cannot be denied.”
— C.P. Snow, 1959

More than 50 years after C.P. Snow's seminal “two cultures” lecture, in which he exposed the division between the humanities and sciences (Snow, 1959), the polarization between these broad domains continues. More recently, E. O. Wilson (1998) noted that intellectuals trained in the social sciences and humanities have difficulty understanding the how the natural sciences are relevant to social behaviour and policy, while natural scientists do not have the background knowledge to engage with social scientists. Even closely connected domains like environmental policy, ethics, social science and biology each have their own practitioners, language and modes of analysis (Wilson). The result, wrote Wilson, is confusion.

The failure of the disciplinary approach is particularly apparent when one examines multi-systemic issues like climate change. For decades, environmental scientists have been communicating about climate change with little effect on individual behaviour (Groffman et al., 2010). Part of the problem is that, traditionally, ecologists’ efforts to reach non-scientific audiences have been based solely on providing information without taking into account the ways in which people reach judgments (Groffman et al.). Yet decisions about environmental behaviour cannot be separated from the social networks that influence people, such as their values and political context (Groffman et al.). To motivate, enable and empower the public to act on climate change, scientists need to apply insights about these broader social issues and how people learn about science — which requires an understanding of ongoing research in the social sciences, not just environmental science. (Groffman et al.).

There are hopeful signs that the humanities-science gap is being bridged, at least at the university level. For example, ecologists are now calling for communications training for university science students, and interdisciplinary degree programs have been proposed to develop professionals with a strong understanding of the relationship between science and society (Groffman et al., 2010). This training would enable graduates to communicate effectively with the public and the media.
Here in Ontario, one such program is the Environmental Visual Communications program offered jointly by Fleming College and the Royal Ontario Museum.Positioned at the convergence of science and art, the program blends visual communication (photography, videography and design) with strategic communication, marketing principles and science knowledge to communicate environmental messages for public education and engagement about conservation and stewardship (Fleming College, 2012).

Further afield, the University of British Columbia held a workshop in September of 2008 entitled “Integrating Science and the Humanities” to explore the promise and challenges of integration between the natural sciences and the humanities (University of British Columbia, 2008).
This type of interdisciplinary collaboration is essential if we are to address systemic, society-wide problems. Though promising, however, it should be happening earlier, at the secondary and elementary levels. This paper will focus on interdisciplinarity and curricular integration at the secondary level.

What’s wrong with the current model?
Wilson (1998) noted, “all tangible phenomena, from the birth of stars to the workings of social institutions, are based on material processes that are ultimately reducible, however long and tortuous the sequences, to the laws of physics.” Or, as Randall Monroe notes in the XKCD comic above, to the laws of mathematics. Either way, synthesis and integration are crucial to understanding the connections between the various disciplines.

In the current cellular model of teaching found in most high schools, disciplines are taught one at a time and independently of each other. Teachers are subject matter experts who can offer depth and breadth of content within their disciplines. This structure allows for deep exploration of the ways of thinking and specific skills particular to each field (Fogarty, 2009).

However, this model encourages students to compartmentalize their learning; humanities, sciences and arts are taught with little attempt to connect one discipline to the next, and students are left to make connections on their own (Fogarty, 2009).

Furthermore, overlapping concepts, skills and attitudes are not identified in the cellular model. While concepts and skills that appear across a variety of disciplines are clearly key areas for learning — so a case can be made for learning them multiple times in different disciplinary contexts — this repetition of learning creates more work for students, reduces the transfer of learning to novel situations, and can be tedious (Fogarty, 2009).

The isolation of the current curricular structure is is exacerbated by the system of prerequisites for university and college acceptance, which requires post-secondary-bound students to begin orienting towards their chosen domain in grade 11. The grade 11 course load of an Ontario student hoping to attend a high-ranking university for a highly competitive honours science program could very likely include:       

• Mathematical Functions
• Physics          
• Chemistry
• Biology
• Earth Sciences
• English

This leaves only two credits with which to explore interests in the humanities.

By Grade 12, this same student could be taking:

• Physics
• Chemistry
• Biology
• Advanced Functions
• Calculus
• English

Again, there would be room for only two additional courses.

By grade 11, students can have eliminated the humanities (with the exception of English) from their educational careers entirely — before they have had an opportunity to explore and appreciate the connections between the disciplines.

This is problematic when one considers the concept of learning and understanding through semantic frames. A semantic frame is the collection of facts and related concepts unconsciously associated with and that are evoked by a particular word — every word is associated with a semantic frame, and every individual has a unique set of semantic frames based on their own experiences (Lakoff, 2010). Because frames are communicated through language and visual imagery, one must have experience with the language of a particular discipline in order to build a semantic frame for it and to make sense of it (Lakoff).

Understanding issues that involve multiple systems requires frames for each system. In the case of climate change, this includes economics, energy, food, health, trade and security (Lakoff, 2010). Yet as a result of our cellular curriculum, most people don’t have the overall background system of frames needed for deep understanding (Lakoff). Education should give people a variety of frames through which to understand the world. Shunting students into either/or domains limits their capacity to make sense of the world outside of their own discipline.

How does integration improve things?
Interdisciplinarity creates a stronger overall background system of frames by examining multiple modes of thinking and developing a broad range of experiences. An interdisciplinary curriculum provides students with opportunities to investigate complex issues related to real-life experiences and with real-world applications (Fogarty, 2009). These connections to the real world are motivating for students, and deepen their engagement with the curriculum (Drake and Reid, 2010).

For example, Weissman (2004) describes a project where students, upon completing a unit on gravity, motion and states of matter, work with an artist to create clay and marble sculptures. When the sculptures are fired, the marbles will melt; the challenge for students is to sculpt the clay into forms that draw the melted marble into aesthetically pleasing patterns. Projects such as this allow students to engage with curricular content in real, practical ways. As a result, learning is more meaningful and personally relevant (Fogarty, 2009).

Integration can also draw students into disciplines they didn’t think they were interested in, and become a gateway to deeper learning (Fogarty, 2009). For example, a student with a keen interest in visual arts may choose to create a comic book biography about a scientist — say, Nikola Tesla — as a science project. As a result of the student’s personal commitment to the product (a comic book), the student will engage with the scientists’ history — Tesla’s achievements, challenges and time period — in a much more profound way than if they had been required to write an essay or memorize facts for a test. In addition, however, the student also deepens their understanding not only of the mechanics of graphic novelization, but of the potential power of personal narratives and visual storytelling in any discipline.

The above examples of interdisciplinary projects also deepen learning by engaging different types of intelligences (visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, musical, mathematical, etc.) (Fogarty, 2009).
As the climate change example has shown, the environment isn’t just about the environment: it is deeply connected with many other issues and disciplines (Lakoff, 2010). An interdisciplinary approach is critical to fully understanding these other disciplines, and to synthesizing them into an understanding of climate change. A more connected, integrated curriculum that is organized into complex experiences that immerse students in multiple ways of learning and knowing enables students to think in global, systems terms.

How can teachers begin integrating the curriculum?
Because everybody sees different meanings in the world and different relationships between ideas, curriculum integration looks different for every teacher (Fogarty, 2009). As a result, there are a variety of approaches.

One tactic is to collaborate with other teachers to develop parallel sequencing of topics from different courses so that they coincide with one another (Fogarty, 2009). The cellular nature of the high school system makes integrated curriculum across courses more of a challenge at this level than at the elementary level, but it is possible. Courses can be sequenced so that teaching of related topics happens in parallel, allowing the lessons and activities of each class to support and enhance one another (Fogarty). For example, the study of optics in Grade 10 Science could be sequenced to coincide with an exploration of pinhole cameras in Grade 10 Visual Arts. Sequencing may be most effective in grades 9 and 10, when students’ class schedules are more predictable due to the higher proportion of required courses taken during these years.

Drake and Reid (2010) outline a backwards design approach as an effective way to plan an integrated curriculum within a single course. In this model, teachers scan the curriculum to determine what learning is most important (Drake and Reid). The more a specific learning or theme recurs, the more it is worthy, worldly, and widely influential (Fogarty, 2009). Teachers then choose an issue or theme through which to examine the key learnings. The unit culminates with a rich assessment task that involves multiple subjects, and daily lessons are structured around essential questions that lead to the culminating task.

Creating rich culminating tasks that integrate previously learned knowledge from a variety of disciplines provides subject richness, helps students deepen their understanding of what they already know, and allows for higher-order thinking, problem solving and decision making (Drake and Reid, 2010). A culminating task for Grade 11 Science, for example, could integrate information from any of Grade 9 or 10 Science, Math, Geography, History, English, and Physical and Health Education, since most students will already have completed all of these courses.

Conclusion
Though creating an integrated curriculum requires a fundamental change in practice (Drake and Reid, 2010), the increasing complexity of our world demands it. Integrated education will lead to more trust, collaboration and valuation of alternative methods between academic domains. These changes will be essential to the development of solutions to society’s biggest challenges.

The ever-growing accessibility of information makes interdisciplinary learning more important than ever for individuals, too. The world is in need of synthesizers — people who can sift through information, think critically about it, and make wise choices. By developing individuals who can think around a wide variety of issues and topics, starting at any point and moving in any direction (Wilson, 1998), interdisciplinary education may be the best way to prepare students for for the future.

References

Drake, S. and Reid, R. (2010). Integrated curriculum: Increasing relevance while maintaining accountability. What Works? Research into Practice, Research Monograph #28.

Fleming College. (2012). Environmental Visual Communication. Retrieved December 10, 2012, from http://flemingcollege.ca/programs/environmental-visual-communication

Fogarty, R. (2009). How to integrate the curricula. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Groffman, P. M., Stylinski, C., Nisbet, M., et al. (2010). Restarting the conversation: challenges at the interface between ecology and society. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 8 (6), 284-291.

Lakoff, G. (2010). Why it matters how we frame the environment. Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, 4:1, 70-81.

Monroe, R. XKCD: Purity. Retrieved on December 10, 2012, from http://xkcd.com/435/

Snow, C. P. (2001 [1959]). The Two Cultures. London: Cambridge University Press
University of British Columbia. (2008). Integrating science and the humanities. Retrieved December 10, 2012, from http://www.sci-hum.pwias.ubc.ca/

Weissman, D. (2004). You can’t get much better than that. In Rabkin, N. & Redmond, R. (Eds.), Putting the arts in the picture: reframing education in the 21st Century. Columbia College Chicago.

Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The unity of knowledge. New York: Knopf.