On The Construction, Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Experience in ‘Critical’ Outdoor Education

Abstract

Abstract Experience is at the historical heart of outdoor education, caring for the environment/nature is a new moral imperative for 'critical' outdoor education, yet the activity basis of the outdoor/nature experience/imperative and the discourse(s) in which they function are rarely examined. To rectify this oversight, different constructions of critical outdoor education are contrasted to highlight the potency of the ecopolitic and (socio-)environmental ethic embodied in each construction. The essay concludes reconstructively with an elaboration of some critical dimensions of outdoor education. The paper invites 'reflective' and 'critical' outdoor/experiential educators to scrutinize the meanings they give to 'experience', how they construct it pedagogically in and through selected activities in certain environments and how, in turn, there are individual, social and ecological consequences for the 'experiencer', (outdoor) education's role in constituting such subjectivities and, subsequently, how 'inner', 'social' and 'outer' natures are constructed, often in contradiction. Introduction The 'postmodern' discourse of 'critical' outdoor education in Australia has recently been broadened by a number of essays that, in different ways, examine or challenge the field's educational assumptions and aspirations. Care for the environment, for example, is a focus. The term 'culture' is also prominent in this critical discourse that seems to have distanced itself from the 'social' equity and justice concerns of 'modern' critical theory (Martin, 1999, p. 464). This critical discourse also appears to have non-problematically imported from other cultures the 'deep' imperative for living in harmony with the environment while rehearsing various deconstructions of a range of cultural myths associated educationally with the socalled 'ecological crisis' (Bowers, 1987, 1993). Criticisms, presumably of Australian culture and its historical development and educational institutions are, in general, directed at the dominance of western, anthropocentric, positivist, patriarchal, industrial, progressive and dualistic thinking. Culture, it seems, in both Australia and the Pacific North-West of the USA, from where Bowers is writing, is at odds with nature and its care. The trend to 'cultural criticism' in outdoor education in Australia mirrors broader academic developments in the Humanities and - Social Sciences, including educational theory. Yet, despite the many vantage points available for examining the formative development of critical outdoor education, the infamous exchanges between Bowers (1991a, b, c) and the critical theorist of education Peter McLaren (1991) and feminist theorist of education Maxine Greene are not acknowledged. Nor are the various critiques of 'deep ecology' in environmental philosophy, social and feminist theory that have come from various parts of the (western) world, at least (Beck, 1995; Biehl & Staudenmaier, 1995; Ferry, 1995; Heller, 1999; Salleh, 1993; van Wyck, 1997). These 'lacks' point to a number of conceptual problems with practical consequences in the emerging culturally critical discourse of outdoor education in Australia. As might be expected, the study of culture is a dynamic, as has recently been demonstrated in Roger Sandall's (2001) pro-(western)-civilization critique of the relativism of what he calls 'the culture cult'. Writing in Australia, about Australia and New Zealand, Sandall, a culturally conservative anthropologist, argues amongst a litany of complaints that the 'romantic primitivism' associated with the culture cult has ushered in the phenomenon of 'designer tribalism' to the 'new age' practices and discourses of some disaffected segments of contemporary postmodern society. These include radical, mystical and spiritual elements of the environmental movement, of which critical outdoor education may be a candidate for membership. From the 'other' side of politics, the 'leftist' German critical theorist Jurgen Habermas (1989) differentiates between 'old', 'new' and 'young' conservativism in cultural criticism. …