Author Archives: kmason7

Environmental Racism in Under the Feet of Jesus

Posted on by
1

It is not uncommon to see that within many cities there is a divide among the social classes, especially in reference to housing. A substantial amount of research has been provided that suggests people from the same social class typically live in the same area. For example, if an individual was considered to be within the upper, or rich, social class then he/she would probably live among many other people with the same status. Often times the people within this upper social class are “cared” about more by the government than people from the lower social class. This is evident if you look at the neighborhoods in the poor areas of the city and if you look at the rich areas. More often than not, an individual will notice that the richer neighborhoods have far greater institutions, such as schools or parks, while the non-wealthy neighborhoods have the complete opposite. This notion continually widens the gap between the social classes.

Continue reading →

Environmental Factors and Autism

Posted on by
Reply

After reading part of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, I immediately thought of autism, which is a complex disorder of brain development. Symptoms of this disorder begin to show when a child is of a very young age, usually around three. It has different degrees of severity that can affect social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication, and repetitive behaviors. Today, it generally affects about one out of every eighty-eight children in the United States every year alone. However, this number has continued to increase for the last four decades, but some doctors have suggested that this increase in autistic cases could just be that there is actually a name for it now. It might have always been present, but now that there is a name for it, doctors are able to classify the disorder.

Continue reading →

Cultivation is Education

Posted on by
2

Attempting to create a successful education system in Colonial America was exceedingly difficult. The main reason being that the colonists were more concerned with finding a way to stay alive than educating their children in the way that we do today. In fact, the reason that so many of them were literate in the first place was because of religion. The colonists, especially the individuals in the Northern colony, wanted everybody to be able to read so they could understand the Bible. This is basically the reason why an education system was considered to be a very important addition to the colonies.

However, as stated above, the will to live was much more important to them, which is why it took until the 19th century for schools to spread across the United States. Yet, the children at this time had the chance to learn a different type of education. From their parents they learned about cultivation, agriculture, and the willingness to work. In fact, it was believed that since there was an abundance of land, if a man was willing to work hard to make a living, and with a little luck, he would succeed. It was common to think that if a man was impoverished, or poor, it was because he was lazy. There were so many rich resources available to every working man, that learning how to use it was necessary. This was ultimately what education was in the very beginning, it was learning how to work the land successfully.

Continue reading →

Is Nature Inferior?

Posted on by
1

When God first created Earth, it was a place of freedom for all creatures. In fact, there wasn’t anything that appeared to have the desire to exercise their power over the land and all of its organisms. Even after the creation of man, as described in the Genesis, there was a natural balance of power. God created creatures to accompany Adam because he believed that “it is not good that man should be alone” (Genesis, 2), while He created the plants so that Adam could eat from them. However, after the woman, Eve, was deceived by the serpent, life on Earth changed drastically. Suddenly there was suffering and death, and man was forced to work the land in order to stay alive. It appears that man was supposed to live off the land, not control it and everything that lives off it as well.

Nonetheless, in the future humans began to create civilizations. Places where the land was altered and “civilized.” The wilderness was no longer the place God once intended. In fact, it appears that humans began to think that the natural world, places that weren’t inhabited by humans was considered to be unfit for human presence. This point is present in A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson when she describes her trek across the country with the Native Americans. She constantly uses words that are associated with nature to describe evil. For example, she considered the swamp she was forced to cross as “a deep dungeon.” Why would she consider something within nature in such a way, especially when the one she called on for help throughout her whole narrative was God? God was the one who created the swamp, and yet she despises it. She wants the comforts of the man-made place. A place of civilization full of European settlers. Does Mary Rowlandson believe that human civilizations are better than what God originally created? In fact, she even goes on to say that she had to “travel with them into the vast and desolate wilderness.” Ultimately “desolate” means to be empty of inhabitants and visitors. It is with certainty that it can be said the wilderness is not an empty place. It is an ecosystem, full of animals and plants. It appears that Mary Rowlandson disregards His creations and everything that He spent the seven days creating as unimportant.

Continue reading →