T191 The Human Connection with Planet Earth: What is it and Why is it Important?

Monday, 6 October 2008
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM

"There's No Place Like Home"—Expanding Sense of Uniqueness of Home as a Path to Enlisting Students' Desire to Learn How Earth Works

Paper number: T191-8
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Authors

  • Edward Nuhfer Presenting Author
    California State University Channel Islands, Camarillo, CA

Abstract

Today's students demand relevance and practicality. Connecting one's home site to the geological materials, processes, and changes through time present at the site is one of the most practical ways to enlist students' interests. It's natural to love one's home of origin—but why? Every student expects to purchase a home. For most, it will be their life's biggest investment, but on what kinds of decisions will selection rest? We must like to live there, so affect, rather than purely cognitive analyses, must play a dominant role. Yet attraction provided by a nice view or waterfront access, when unmitigated by geoscience awareness, has proven ruinous to tens of thousands of homeowners. Assessing a home site is perhaps the most valuable applied science skill an educated layperson can obtain. An introductory geology course focused on the concept of home can easily accomplish the science literacy requirement, ground students in the most important geoscience concepts, and promote desire for lifelong learning.

However "home" and "taking care of home" are larger concepts than a house site. They include the region—awareness of reasons why certain areas are listed as "best places" in which to live—and among these are scenery, climate and culture. Interdisciplinary liberal arts field trips that include history, literature/poetry, botany, and geoscience convey an appreciation for the region as home and makes geology an essential part of the package.

Finally, geoscience education can expand the concept of home to the scale of our planet. Our home, region, culture, and all living things are what they are only because Earth is unlike any other place that we know about in the universe. The realization that it is irreplaceable and that the conditions that come together to produce home are impossible to reproduce produce a strong awareness of value for our connection to Earth.