Last semester, for our “The Peopling of New York” Macaulay Seminar, Professor Napoli took our class on various tours, including one of the Lower East Side, where the Tenement Museum is located.  I found myself particularly engaged in the tour because I related to the area; it is an area that my Italian ancestors probably inhabited, and it is an area I frequent for food.  So when Professor Napoli explained the immigrant life in the area, I took special interest because this area is where my family lived.  When he mentioned ethnic tensions between two groups of Chinese immigrants, it left a mental imprint because I never noticed it when in the area, and wondered if I would from now on.

Similarly, place-based learning takes the location of  a person and teaches them through it; from my understanding, it is slightly different than sparking interest because the learner is learning about their surroundings and therefore learning about a topic, not just because they find something random interesting.   For example, in “Learning in Your Own Backyard”,  Mary Jo Sutton talks about the (San Francisco) Bay Area Discovery Museum and its efforts to teach about the Bay Area itself.  “The mission of the Bay Area Discovery Museum is to engage, delight, and educate children through the exploration of and connection to the local environment and the diverse communities that live here.  The local environment is central to the institution and is reflected in our programs and our new exhibits” (pp 53).  By emulating their setting, the museum members create an environment of learning fueled by the idea that it is the learners’ natural setting, therefore they will have a natural desire to learn about it, and according to David A. Gruenewald’s “The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place”, should know about.  “[Critical pedagogy/learning] must embrace the experience of being human in connection with the others and with the world of nature, and the responsibility to conserve and restore our shared environments for future generations” (pp. 6).  According to Gruenewald, learning about community and environmental balance is essential to place-based learning as humans.  While I do believe that environmental protection is important, and that education provides people with the answers that they need to make better decisions about their environment, I do not know if this is as much of an education issue as it is an issue of capitalism, social structure, and the effects of human “progress”.  I found it interesting, however, that the article spoke about education as a tool for social and environmental change, which is good, but can be dangerous if it is used to cram beliefs down learner’s throats rather than have then be more open minded about the government.

For New Yorkers and other Americans, I think a prevalent issue right now is fracking.  This is an area in which informal science learning about fracking is useful in deciding whether fracking is worth its results and repercussions.  It also brings up a good point about Gruenewald’s article: people should be taught to be open-minded, and, in some cases cynical.