Environmental Awareness

By Joel Hoekstra

Most of us pass through daily life with blinders on. “People go from point A to Point B without registering the environment they are traveling through,” says Mary delaittre (M.A. ’95). “If someone is driving from Eagan to Minneapolis, I would contend that they get in the car and don’t much notice the world outside.”

deLaittre wants us to see what we’re missing – the sprawl, SUVs, superhighways, and Starbuck’s, as well as the parks, pedestrian paths, wildlife sanctuaries, and empty spaces. She has dedicated herself to promoting what she call “environmental literacy,” the ability to see and think critically about the manmade and natural world. Understanding our surroundings, she believes, equips us with the tools we need to shape and change our environment in ways that suits us, creating communities that facilitate connection rather than separation and segregation.

Giving sight to the unseeing is no easy task, but deLaittre has started small, by training kids. A fellow with the University’s Design Institute, she has written a number of curriculums that can be used to promote environmental literacy in elementary and high schools. The modules get children involved in their neighborhoods – planting community gardens and working on public art works – and encourage connections with other residents. For kids who may come from transient families, the program is an opportunity to cultivate roots in a community, deLaittre says. This, in turn, provides kids with a feeling of stability and enhances their chance of success at school and elsewhere. The Minneapolis Public Schools, in collaboration with the U's Bell Museum and the Corcoran Neighborhood Association, is currently road-testing her curriculum in a two-year pilot program at South High School.

Youngsters have fresh eyes. Ask them to draw a picture of their neighborhood, as deLaittre does when she is teaching a class, and they’ll include such detail as the drug dealer on the corner and the recycling bins in the alleys. Ask them to sketch the road home and they will show you a hop-scotching path that includes telling sidewalk minutia or a heart-breaking path that stretched back to Somalia. But deLaittre encourages kids to think about the world around them.

“Ultimately, everyone of us is a planner,” she explains. “We make decisions that impact our communities, either through our jobs or our lifestyle choices. If you choose to live on a cul-de-sac in a subdivision, you’ve made a decision that it is OK to drive everywhere. If you buy a house next to a train stop, you are making another kind of choice.” Even students who don’t enter the design profession benefit from such perspectives, she says. A student who becomes, say, a banker – what sort of decisions will she make if she is acutely aware of her environment? Will she loan money to a developer building cul-de-sac subdivisions or a developer building multi-use developments that create more of a center in a suburb?” The ultimate effect of teaching kids about design and decision-making, she adds, is improved quality of life and responsible citizenship in communities.

However, even deLaittre can measure her impact only in individual increments. Take, for example, the stand-offish boy who attended Design Camp this summer. The camp, held at the University and directed by deLaittre, brough 120 kids together for a week to participate in activities centered on the many facets of design – in cars, buildings, cities and even clothing. The boy was aggressive and clearly frightened, deLaittre says, and his instinct was to flee. But persuaded by a teacher to stay, he quickly acclimatized. “By the third day, he was a completely different kid. Here he was treated like every other kid who has something to offer, who has good skills.

“But more importantly,” deLaittre continues, “this is a kid they didn’t even think was going to finish high school. And at the end of the week, he was talking about going to college.”

Article re-printed with permission from Joel Hoekstra
Photograph re-printed with permission from Paul Shambroom
Article originally published in Minnesota November – December 2002 and re-printed with their permission.