If you've talked to me lately, you'll know that I've finally begun my classes this week. I'm starting graduate studies at York, in Environmental Studies. Somehow at the end of this I will produce a project linking archaeology and environment. Right now, I'm busy trying to figure out how I will get out of this semester alive.

Take my classes. There are three I am definitly signed into taking and they have to do with methodology of my studies and planning. Fair enough. What I also have to do is find a fourth class for the semester, as my original choice was cancelled.

So, I'm shopping around. Yesterday there were two classes I attended - another planning course and a course in environmental education that touches on using past lifeways and neither was what I expected from the course description and syllabus offered. Which makes you wonder about the purpose of these little blurbs on the net - are they like advertising copy to lure you in?

The planning course came across as rather dry and ideological, if such things can co-exist. I liked the professor okay, but I didn't care for the volunteer demands of the class nor the chosen focus of our professor on downtown development. Although, yes, I could probably turn it to my interest by way of built heritage. I left the class feeling that professor - good, topic -.... kinda interesting, I guess and method of class participation - yawn.


Then I had the environmental education class. And that's when you learn that there are some ways of thought that just rub you the wrong way. The professor came across with the following statements -
a) that Western Civilization probably lost a lot of its humanity with the invention of the Gutenberg (sp?) press
b) that the best way of learning about the environment is to learn as hunters and gatherers (his favorite mode of human living, I think) did - by listening to stories from their elders.
c) that most members of the class were environmentally estranged and were sliding down a slippery slope of Big Brother & Brave New World - he used reality shows (ok, point there maybe) and the development of a birth control pill whereby a woman can reduce her periods to 2 or 3 a year (actually to 1 or none). He's concerned that it may cut her off from her ties to the water and the moon. My thought? It also cuts a lot of women's ties to bloating and cramps. Also seeing as several women in past lifeways did not have periods due to pregnancy, nursing or malnutrition, I don't see how this is will alienate women from their gender roles.

Okay, so that last point was a long one. My point is this is a man that has made a living from some of the more fearmongering p.o.v. s that are out there. Even the connection to using Black Creek Pioneer Village (which intrigued me) is being considered in a negative light - i.e. - how we begun on the slippery slope of destroying our environment as soon as we landed on the shores of North America nearly 600 years ago.
That's his number by the way - 600 years. I can't figure out how he got it - to me Europeans have been here a little over 500, unless you include Viking incursions that stretch it back around a 1000 years ago. The only exception I can think of between that are fisherman that started coming to the Banks of Newfoundland earlier in the 1400's, but something tells me he's not.

And this guy is supposedly not stupid. I mean, a degree from Harvard would indicate some level of critical thinking, no? I almost want to have a look at his earlier publications, because there's something to his style of lecturing that screams "conversion" to me.

Oh, and I also didn't like the potshots he took of Harris and Bush. Not that I'm a fan, but sniping at these figures is rather pointless and a little too easy. And it sorta shows your hand politically right off the bat. I'd much rather have heard an interesting jibe about McGuinty, since he's the one in educational hot water these days.

But I think I should reject taking the above class for my elective. My mother made the very valid point that sometimes we learn more about something when we are discovering what we're disagreeing with, than when we're in full sympatico with a lecturer. And I see her point, I really do. But I am also worried that I'd be in almost constant conflict with the lecturer, which may also not be the most productive course of action either.

Today, I sampled another class, mostly out of curiosity. I liked the way the professor had spoken to the group at orientation last week, so I checked out a class I would never have considered otherwise - Environmental Economics.

And WOW! was it ever cool! Kinda hard and a lot of new concepts, but it was exciting to listen to the prof and how he engaged the class. Its a graduate level class, but designed for people of very different backgrounds, including those who've never taken an economics class before. And there will only be a little math. Even in the one class I sat in on, I felt I learned a lot. Its a long way from my "area of concentration", but I've gotten to thinking that having that grounding could go a long way to giving me perspective on my project of injecting archaeology and heritage into the planning process.

Anyways, I must sign off now. I have Environmental Planning next and then tomorrow morning I have Intro to Planning, and another "shopping" class tomorrow - Landscape Ecology in the Environment.

Oh, and I've also heard through the grapevine that there are others in the faculty with an interest in heritage. I must find them....