Chet Bowers

Summary of ideas

In the preface of his book, Pagans in the Promised Land, author Steven T. Newcomb, co-founder and co-director of the Indigenous Law Institute, credits Bowers saying, "I learned of the importance of metaphors and metaphorical frameworks in the social construction of reality. Bowers helped me understand that metaphors are carriers of and therefore connected to complex metaphorical systems." During the last four decades, Chet Bowers has reminded students, academics and activists that words have a history, that metaphors contain cultural perceptions that may be inadequate to address the challenges of the modern world. Bowers also contends that the digital age and computer learning, while broadly accepted as progressive and positive, have acted to homogenize cultural diversity and thought. In her book, The Resurgence of the Real, Body, Nature and Place in a Hypermodern World, Charlene Spretnak describes Bowers as, "One of the most astute critics of computer mediated learning, Chet Bowers, has focused attention on the largely unexamined ways in which computer use amplifies or reduces various cultural orientations." Spretnak goes on to discuss at some length Bowers's views on the ways in which the use of computers and digital information for education changes the educational process and the resulting cultural context reinforce "what Bowers calls 'the particular messianic ethos of modernity'".

Challenging orthodoxies

Jerry Manders, in the book The Case Against the Global Economy says, "C.A.Bowers has been focusing on the way computer usage affects the basic ecological and political values of the people who use them. Bowers makes the case that the advance of computers is contributing to a loss of ecological sensitivity and understanding...particularly educating through computers, effectively excludes an entire set of ideas and experiences that heretofore had been the building blocks for a developing connection with the earth." In his book The False Promises of Constructivist Theories of Learning, Bowers refers to Gregory Bateson's idea that everything is in some form of relationship and information exchange affects the life-forming and sustaining nature of the organism. Cultural historian, Thomas Berry, in his book, The Great Work: Our Way into The Future writes, "Another term coming into use is Earth Literacy, as a basic context for educational programs from the earliest years through professional levels. Earth Literacy is being fostered especially by educators such as David Orr of Oberlin College and Chet Bowers of Portland State.

The cultural commons

In their book, EcoJustice Education Toward Diverse, Democratic and Sustainable Communities, Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edumundson and John Lupinacci write, "Drawing on the work of C.A. Bowers (1997,2001) in particular, we offer the following interrelated elements to define EcoJustice: ...The recognition and protection of diverse cultural and environmental commons--the necessary interdependent relationship of humans with the land, air, water, and other species with whom we share this planet, and the inter-generational practices and relationships among diverse groups of people that do not require the exchange of money as the primary motivation..." In his book, The Way Forward: Educational Reforms that Focus on the Cultural Commons, Bowers provides a conceptual framework for understanding the ecological importance of the world's diversity of cultural commons and how this diversity is currently undermined by global market forces and digital technologies that overwhelm inter-generational communication. Bowers states that inter-generational knowledge and skills, which vary from culture to culture, are becoming increasingly important as population growth and changes in natural systems limit sources of food, water and other life sustaining necessities.

Ecological intelligence

Reviewing Bowers' book, The Culture of Denial: Why the Environmental Movement Needs a Strategy for Reforming Universities and Public Schools, Eric Shibuya, (now an Associate Professor of Strategic Studies at Marine Corps University, Quantico) wrote, "Bowers argues that the educational system needs to be completely restructured to instill values and teach practices that lead to ecologically sustainable forms of living. Along the way, Bowers points to how even thinkers considered "reformists" contribute to ecologically unsustainable ways of thinking. What is being called for here is not simply the addition of environmental studies programs, or the add-on of "green" courses into the curriculum, but rather a fundamental change in the foundations, the very values, that our educational system strives to propagate." Bowers argues that no one can exist independent of social and ecological relationships, and that the concept of personal autonomy has been championed at the expense of the environment for personal and corporate gain. Dr. Rolf Jucker, in his book Do We Know What We Are Doing, says, "...Bowers points out that autonomy is an ideological construct of Western thinkers who did (and still do) not understand how thinking always reproduces even as it individualizes the taken-for-granted cultural patterns of thinking."

Critical reception

In "Toward Awakening Consciousness" (included in Cultural Studies and Environmentalism: The Confluence of EcoJustice, Place-based (Science) Education, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems) Michael L. Bently refers to Bowers as "a pioneer in identifying 'root metaphors' that shape our thinking and behavior".

Patrick Slattery in Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era writes that "Chet Bowers, like Jacques Cousteau, worries about what we are doing to the physical environment. However, Bowers advances the dialogue by asserting that modern liberalism and Enlightenment rationality have produced an emphasis on individualism and reasoning that prevents ecological sensibilities and cooperative community efforts." Slattery also discusses Bowers's concept of "modern hubris" and aspects of Bowers's work.

Writing in the Encyclopedia of the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education Jeff Edmundson says "Chet Bowers was an environmentalist before it became fashionable." Edmundson goes on to discuss Bowers's theory of "root metaphors", his opposition to the "assumptions of modernity", and the importance of the "commons".

Published work