Contextual learning cycles engage whole brain thinking with concepts, beyond memorizing facts, to see the “Big Picture.” A Harvard study concluded that the mining ban in the protected Boundary Waters area generates more jobs and income than would copper-sulfide mining.
CONTENT that describes wilderness are factual statements. Contextual statements explain how photosynthesis converts solar power into sugar power. Value statements recognize treaty rights in Anishinaabe ancestral homelands which include the BWCAW.
CONCEPTUALIZING organizes packets of information into ideas, beyond the narrow interests of mining profit. Tourism, outdoor recreation, and human interaction with over a million acres of pristine wilderness of water, wildlife and forest speaks for itself. Mining outsources profits, externalizes costs and leaves wasteland in its wake when ores are depleted.
CONNECTING ideas are illustrated by understanding forest as a “wood wide web,” an underground “internet.” Certain kinds of fungi connect trees to send warning signals to each other and for sharing water, nitrogen and carbon in a mycelium network. Connection in context is everything!
CONTEXTUALIZING weaves how and why the BWCAW is a gift that keeps on giving. Beyond a collection of trees, forests and lakes form symbiotic communities of cooperation. Forests “inhale” carbon dioxide and “exhale” oxygen, animals do the reverse. The BWCAW, greater than the sum of its parts, absorbs and stores carbon to regulate climate.
CRITIQUING requires evaluation of how vulnerable the BWCAW is to incursion by an industry with a notorious history, leaving a record of destruction in its wake. Acid mine drainage devastates lakes, rivers, aquatic life and surrounding forest ecosystems.
CREATIVITY is a call for action in this Anthropocene Epoch when human activity adversely effects natural systems. We know how we got here, can we find our way out? Remember “water is life,” what we do to the BWCAW, we do to ourselves.
Harold Honkola
Stillwater