Socio-Political Risk Management by Kurt J. Engemann Cathryn F. Lavery Jeanne M. Sheehan

Author:Kurt J. Engemann, Cathryn F. Lavery, Jeanne M. Sheehan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2022-09-17T11:28:30.070000+00:00

Itle-Clark & Comaskey go on to provide a comprehensive account of the evolution of moral education models and the predominant exclusion of animals. A humane pedagogy empowers learners to identify their values and align their behavior in accordance with them through critical thinking, perspective taking and reflection. Implementing a humane pedagogy can help learners identify the processes of their thinking to reveal implicit and explicit biases behind the creation of their values, attitudes, morality, and ethics. Humane education principles and methods must be applied broadly and beyond the classroom to forge an alternative way of thinking, being, and solving social problems and formidable risks to humanity moving forward.

Our education and other socially constructed systems are products of our inequitable shared histories, increased privatization and corporate incursions (Urban, Wagoner, Gaither, 2019). All of these systems intentionally and unintentionally perpetuate moral blind spots that minimize the inherent worth of certain humans, non-human animals and the environment and lead to the maintenance and cultivation of further implicit and explicit bias against them. These systems are varied, violent, and oppressive, and nearly every human, if not all humans, participate in them as there are few apparent or easy alternatives. This is the case regardless of human status and victimization within these systems that are birthed from fabricated social hierarchies. Examining biases toward non-human animals and the natural world provides a unique opportunity to practice awareness, deep examination, and possible transformation of attitudes and systems that are the products of cultural and structural violence – and the root cause of all social harms perpetrated against other animals, including other humans, and the environment (Galtung, 1969).

Education and training play a central role in developing leadership and moral behavior in our complex, rapidly changing, knowledge-based society. Moral growth does not always fit neatly into established disciplines, and educators in all settings need essential theory and formative research to support them in creating curriculum and applying methods to effectively expand ethical development, social responsibility, civic engagement, and other prosocial behaviors. Without these compassionate guidelines, ethical people largely turn a blind eye to the everyday commodification and exploitation of other animals and the natural world. Widely held implicit biases prevent educators and learners in all settings from including animal and planetary concerns in the vast majority of teaching environments. Our individual and collective empathy is dampened regularly as we ignore the exploitation of nature that maintains, reinforces, and expands oppressive power structures and occurs with most of our consent and collaboration (Joy, 2011; 2019). It is not only morally imperative that institutions of formal and informal learning and teaching recognize and illuminate these ethical blind spots; it is imperative for the survival of our species. These blind spots are at the root of widespread and systematic human caused suffering inflicted on animals, the environment, and ultimately, ourselves. Our anthropocentric worldview can possibly spur compassion for other creatures when we reject the single focus and willful blindness that has thus far kept us on a steady path toward destruction and cruelty.

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