Ecological Literacy
David Orr defines ecological literacy in this way:
Literacy is the ability to read. Numeracy is the ability to count. Ecological literacy, according to Garrett Hardin, is the ability to ask, "What then?" (85)In a sense, ecological literacy is about understanding how our activities – including reading and writing – not only impact the earth but fit into the complex web of ecological relationships within which we live. "To become ecologically literate," Orr continues:
one must certainly be able to read and, I think, even like to read. Ecological literacy also presumes as ability to use numbers, and the ability to know what is countable and what is not, which is to say the limits of numbers. . . . Ecological literacy also requires the more demanding capacity to observe nature with insight, a merger of landscape and mindscape. (86)This is another way of articulating the idea of wholeness that lies at the heart of ecofeminist pedagogies and is integral to the nondualist conception of self that I have promoted in this webtext.