Deeper Environmental Learning

Louisiana has an attractive license plate option that promotes environmental education. Other license plate choices for state residents endorse the protection of specific types of wildlife. Elementary, middle, and high school programs in the state have more programs and activities in recent years for environmental education. What about environmental education in higher education and in corporate training programs? Obviously environmental education can occur there and through information and news sources directed to the general public.

I spent 30 years of my life as a college management educator. Although I taught courses in basic management and organizational behavior, my specialty courses were business ethics and governmental, social and environmental issues. Almost every university and business college has one or several faculty members who likewise teach ethical, social and environmental issues. Sometimes this coverage is a stand-alone course or as significant parts of several required courses.

Business students have long been assigned readings and discussed actual cases concerning social and environmental issues. These students have also been tested on their knowledge of how key environmental forces impact business and how business practices impact our social and natural environments. Business school students are hardly alone in their significant exposure to these issues. Many academic and professional programs in our universities also have required courses focusing on environmental concerns and responsibilities.

As a previous faculty member, I believe that higher education must admit some failures in delivering deeper environmental education for many American students. Our efforts have fallen short of having that much influence on many college graduates who entered business and professional careers. Certain industry and business cultures have easily overpowered apparent lessons of humanity and responsibility that many young people supposedly learned through family or educational experiences.

There’s a key distinction between deep and shallow learning. Undergraduate and graduate programs covered many perspectives and practices of potential benefit for future managers and administrators. Students appeared to comprehend these managerial topics and approaches, at least for testing purposes and scored well enough. But did real or deeper learning occur? Often what happened with these students was likely shallow learning.

Decades ago, we used to give oral exams occasionally for some lower-performing graduate students who were finishing degree programs. It was often embarrassing for us as graduate faculty to ask what we thought were fairly simple questions a year or so after students took a particular course. Quite often students looked completely baffled at these simple questions.

Yes, college students often retain information long enough to pass tests during a semester. However, many students don’t experience deeper learning about social and environmental challenges that they will likely confront at certain points in their careers. The perspectives that seemed reasonable or vital in college textbooks and classroom discussions often don’t survive long in certain business and professional cultures. The operating values that exist within some of these business and professional cultures begin to erode the moral values that many college graduates might have held earlier. College graduates can find it more and more difficult to confront or challenge the weight of the differing value systems that are rewarded in some business cultures.

Even many business and professional training programs that exist to update managers and employees on environmental responsibilities can’t overcome the contrasting and strong reinforcements found in some company cultures. Learning opportunities in both higher education and corporate training programs often aren’t strong enough to counter and begin to change actual company cultures and practices.

Deeper and more impactful environmental learning requires more of educators and trainers. One educational model emphasizes the metaphor of “unfreezing, change and refreezing.” Each of these stages for environmental learning is important to change established company values and norms that don’t really support sustainable environmental practices. Where we as educators and trainers fail is that we don’t have enough creative, powerful and personal approaches for students to “unfreeze” or more fully understand environmental shortcomings. We often don’t offer enough convincing lessons showing organizations making positive environmental contributions. We are also divorced from counseling and supporting those who are in the actual process of taking chances and making at least some differences in business organizations.

Managers and professionals need to do more than have the courage to suggest more responsible environmental practices within their companies. They need effective communication skills and other tools and tactics to convince top management to move toward more sustainable environmental practices. These change agents need creativity and also persistence in the face of opposing values and practices. It’s easy for young managers and professionals to become frustrated and cynical when their best intentions and early initiatives show little promise of changing company attitudes and policies. It’s difficult to anticipate, too, when enough momentum has occurred to reach some “tipping point” where top management starts to make more responsive environmental commitments.

We must all do better if we hope to see more sustainable environmental practices occur sooner, rather than later. A key question for us seems whether or not we’re viewed by others in our organizations as a strong advocate for organizational change toward sustainable environmental practices. Leadership is much more than good intentions.