(1) Knowledge about the interactions of people
with the workings of nature is accumulated by thought, observation
and experiment. This knowledge is organised in the form of physical
laws which explain the way nature works; and spiritual/ethical laws
which define the ways we should behave towards other people and the
rest of nature.
(2) Spiritual and ethical laws are studied and
applied to manage human production (the subject of political
economy) : i.e. political economy defines the way people are
governed in their everyday lives through political and economic
understanding.
(3) Improvements in political and economic
understanding are applied through social welfare and education to
increase social well-being.
(4) Increased social well-being stabilises human
production.
(5) Physical laws are applied to manage natural
production (the subject of natural economy) i.e. natural economy
defines the way people process physical and biological materials to
meet their needs and wants through environmental
understanding.
Together political and natural economy make up
the subject of consumermatics, the body of knowledge which defines
the forces of consumerism which since Kingsley's day have
determined the pace of world development.
(6) Improvements in environmental understanding
are applied through public health, nature study, and care for
nature, to increase environmental well-being.
(7) Increased environmental well-being stabilises
natural production.
Unfortunately his
efforts, together with those of some of his contemporaries, notably
John Ruskin, to encourage the growth of an embryonic generalist
education system, which covered this holistic perspective, were
swamped by the national priority for the training of specialists to
control nature and exploit an Empire. Kingsley's contemporary,
Henslow, a Cambridge professor began this process in his village
school by getting pupils to dissect flowers and learn scientific
terminology. They helped Darwin in his botanical experiments. The
impact of these revolutionary ideas at the start of state support
for education certainly turned the heads of the inspectorate
towards single- subject teaching.
In contrast,
Kingsley's starting point was the study of
'civilisation'.
"...give me
the political economist, the sanitary reformer, the engineer; and
take your saints and virgins, relics and miracles. The
spinning-jenny and the railroad, Cunard's liners and the electric
telegraph, are to me, if not to you, signs that we are, on some
points at least, in harmony with the universe; ".
In this broader
context Kingsley offers an educational model for modern times where
we require a broad view of society and environment to absorb the
educational implications of sustainable development.
The period of
Kingsley's life was a triumph of invention and applied science
which brought about great changes in the appearance of the British
countryside. In the main, these changes were results of applied
science, first to allow mass transport of people, and then to
promote the spread of new ideas through mass communication.
Kingsley described science as a 'good fairy' which could increase
human well-being, providing it was harnessed to a political system
which aspired to develop the latent potential in
everyone.
It is convenient to
define this period of rapid socio-environmental change as the 72
years spanning the opening of the first public railway line in 1825
to the first experiments in wireless in 1897. People born in the
first decade of the 19th century would have experienced the
benefits of mass production of goods and services in the 'age of
steam', and from the launch of the penny post in 1840, would have
been able to respond to overnight news about people and events
throughout the world. They might have used the first public
telephone exchange in 1878, and seen the first motor cars in the
1880s. A person born in 1825 might have lived into their seventh
decade to celebrate Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1897, the year in
which the first plastic records entered people's homes. Kingsley
saw the early benefits of applied science but died prematurely in
1875. He lived long enough however to become intensely aware of the
human and environmental disbenefits of unchecked industrialism
organised for maximum profit, and the social disfigurement it
caused through substandard housing of urban workers .
Kingsley was one of
the first to value nature study as a worthwhile hobby. He was an
amateur sea-shore ecologist, and in the Water Babies he used the
cleansing power of detritus feeders in rock pool food chains as a
metaphor to preach the need for proper water
management.
"Only where
men are wasteful and dirty, and let sewers run into the sea,
instead of putting the stuff upon the fields like thrifty
reasonable souls; or throw herrings' heads, and dead dog-fish, or
any other refuse, into the water; or in any way make a mess upon
the clean shore, there the water-babies will not come, sometimes
not for hundreds of years (for they cannot abide anything smelly or
foul): but leave the sea anemones and the crabs to clear away
everything, till the good tidy sea has covered up all the dirt in
soft mud and clean sand, where the water- babies can plant live
cockles and whelks and razor shells and sea-cucumbers and golden-
combs, and make a pretty live garden again, after man's dirt is
cleared away. And that, I suppose, is the reason why there are no
waterbabies at any watering-place which I have ever seen".
The notion of
conserving living resources, from rare species to valued
landscapes, means managing their use so that vital stocks of
plants, and animals are maintained for the benefit of succeeding
generations. But progress in educating for sustainable development
has been lamentably slow, largely because it has been seen as
peripheral, and sometimes as a hindrance, to humankind's continuing
quest for social and economic welfare.
From the building of
the first coal-powered factories and mines a century before
Kingsley, it was clear that unchecked industrial enterprise is
incompatible with nature. Linnaeus, for example, on his Royal fact
finding tour of Sweden's natural resources in the late 18th
century, reported on the poisonous fumes from copper smelters which
had destroyed vegetation down-wind of the factories. However, it
was not until the middle of the next century that commentators
began to agitate for something to be done about the environmental
impact of a rapidly developing industrial society. John Ruskin, for
example, railed against the ugly impact of tourism on Europe's
mountain landscapes. This was exacerbated by the pollution from
holiday resorts, which even then had begun to defile Alpine
streams. Charles Kingsley summarised his two-pronged attack on the
socio-environmental effects of industrialism in a sermon preached
in 1870 when he spoke of 'human soot' as a by-product of
competitive investment in mass-production.
"Capital is
accumulated more rapidly by wasting a certain amount of human life,
human health, human intellect, human morals, by producing and
throwing away a regular percentage of human soot-of that thinking
and acting dirt which lies about, and, alas ! breeds and
perpetuates itself in foul alleys and low public-houses, and all
and any of the dark places of the earth.
But as in the
case of the manufacturers, the Nemesis comes swift and sure. As the
foul vapours of the mine and manufactory destroy vegetation and
injure health, so does the Nemesis fall on the world of man-so does
that human soot, those human poison gases, infect the whole society
which has allowed them to fester under its feet. Sad; but not
hopeless. Dark; but not without a gleam of light on the
horizon."
Kingsley was also
prophetic in his vision of more enlightened times when society
would demand that the countryside and human lives wasted by
industrial development should be cleaned-up.
"I can yet
conceive a time when, by improved chemical science, every foul
vapour which now escapes from the chimney of a manufactory,
polluting the air, destroying the vegetation, shall be seized,
utilised, converted into some profitable substance, till the Black
Country shall be black no longer, and the streams once more run
crystal clear, the trees be once more luxuriant, and the desert
which man has created in his haste and greed, shall, in literal
fact, once more blossom as the rose.
And just so
can I conceive a time when, by a higher civilisation, founded on
political economy, more truly scientific, because more truly
according to the will of God, our human refuse shall be utilised
like our material refuse, when man as man, even down to the weakest
and most ignorant, shall be found to be (as he really is) so
valuable that it will be worth while to preserve his health, to the
level of his capabilities, to save him alive, body, intellect, and
character, at any cost; because men will see that a man is, after
all, the most precious and useful thing in the earth, and that no
cost spent on the development of human beings can possibly be
thrown away".
The growing
conflicts between economic development and quality of environment
took more than a century to come to a head in the Rio Environment
Summit. This assembly of world leaders in 1992 highlighted a global
imperative to promote inter-disciplinary systems thinking, and
encourage communities to express their concerns about quality of
life in local environmental action plans. In the context of modern
environmentalism, the world of Charles Kingsley is an exemplar for
constructing appropriate holistic knowledge maps about the
connections between the technical, biological and spiritual
components of sustainable development. He was one of the first
people to offer an overview of world development that took account
of applied science, its detrimental social and environmental
impacts, and the need to consider the spiritual dimensions of
'place' and 'change'. His novels are imaginative and popular
interpretations of his ideas presented on various stages, some of
which were contemporary, and others were set in more exotic places
and distant times. His messages were the same: to urge government
to action, and to calm social strife through the 'eternal goodness'
of religion.
"And now, my dear little man, what should we
learn from this parable?
We should
learn thirty-seven or thirty-nine things, I am not exactly sure
which: but one thing, at least, we may learn and that is this-when
we see efts in the ponds, never to throw stones at them, or catch
them with crooked pins, or put them into vivariums with
sticklebacks, that the sticklebacks may prick them in their poor
little stomachs, and make them jump out of the glass into
somebody's workbox, and so come to a bad end. For these efts are
nothing else but the water babies who are stupid and dirty, and
will not learn their lessons and keep themselves clean; and,
therefore (as comparative anatomists will tell you fifty years
hence, though they are not learned enough to tell you now), their
skulls grow flat, their jaws grow out, and their brains grow small,
and their tails grow long, and they lose all their ribs (which I am
sure you would not like to do), and their skins grow dirty and
spotted, and they never get into the clear rivers, much less into
the great wide sea, but hang about in dirty ponds, and live in the
mud, and eat worms, as they deserve to do.
But that is
no reason why you should ill-use them: but only why you should pity
them, and be kind to them, and hope that some day they will wake
up, and be ashamed of their nasty, dirty, lazy, stupid life, and
try to amend, and become something better once more. For, perhaps,
if they do so, then after 379,423 years, nine months, thirteen
days, two hours, and twenty-one minutes (for aught that appears to
the contrary), if they work very hard and wash very hard all that
time, their brains may grow bigger, and their jaws grow smaller,
and their ribs come back, and their tails wither off, and they will
turn into water-babies again, and, perhaps, after that into
land-babies; and after that, perhaps, into grown men.
You know they
won't? Very well, I dare say you know best. But, you see, some
folks have a great liking for those poor little efts. They never
did anybody any harm, or could if they tried; and their only fault
is, that they do no good-any more than some thousands of their
betters. But what with ducks, and what with pike, and what with
sticklebacks, and what with water- beetles, and what with naughty
boys, they are 'sae sair haddened doun', as the Scotsmen say, that
it is a wonder how they live; and some folks can't help hoping that
they may have another chance, to make things fair and even,
somewhere, somewhen, somehow."
