New way of thinking may require new way of teaching

Changing our relationship with the environment depends on changing the way we think. But can we think in new ways if we continue to learn in old ways? I have to wonder.

I was always good at school, but during my second year in college a thought that had been niggling around since high school finally gelled. I realized that my success in the classroom was less a matter of intelligence or “learning” than a facility for recognizing what the teacher wanted to hear and providing it.

The other shoe dropped in a history class where, for the first time in my educational experience, a teacher expected...