Agnes Brown

Date of Award

Spring 5-3-2024

Advisor(s)

John Van Buren

Abstract

Abstract

Students studying the environment know and feel the emotional toll that it can take. This can easily contribute to mental health issues and utter defeat. This paper addresses the exclusion of optimism from environmental education and the impacts this has on childhood development and students as they advance to higher levels of education. Through this analysis, the goal is to find a role for hope in a topic typically framed in an apocalyptic manner. The shift from denying the existence of climate change to denying that it can be addressed, particularly through the usage of “doomsday language,” has created a culture of pessimism, hopelessness, and despair in environmental education, and led to further mental health issues among adolescents. Climate optimism is often looked down upon as naive; however, few studies have actually analyzed the potential utility of hope in environmental education. This paper aims to bridge that gap in data with a case study on Fordham students majoring in environmental studies and how their childhood environmental education affected them. chapter 1 defines climate pessimism and presents quantitative and qualitative data on the issue using past studies. This chapter talks a little about environmental psychology, and how harmful doomsday language can be. chapter 2 provides the history of childhood environmental education and the role climate views have played in the past. Further, it discusses past studies that have been done on the role of hope in environmental education. chapter 3 evaluates the effect of pessimistic and optimistic approaches in childhood education and the impact they have on childhood development, and expands on chapter 1, proposing a framework for climate change that psychologists recommend. chapter 4 introduces the current governmental and school policies on environmental education, and chapter 5 expands on this, diving into critical dialogue about future recommendations for redesigning the curriculum and proposing changes and alternatives to better address the crushing defeat that many students feel in environmental education.

Keywords: environmental policy, environmental education, environmental history, developmental psychology, climate optimism, climate pessimism, environmental psychology, educational psychology

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