educational system is failing?

In his manifesto, Earth in Mind, environmental activist and educator David W. Orr states that his pro-environmentalist policies and his philosophy of education are united. Going against the current tendency, even amongst liberal educators, to embrace standardized testing as a measurement of scholastic success, Orr instead emphasizes the need to create more mindful consumers of the earth's resources. Our failure to produce environmentally savvy students is why our education system is failing the planet. In the field of biology "because of the recent overemphasis on molecular biology and genetic engineering, which are more lucrative but not more important," the study of ecology and environmental biology is being lost, and systems of "vernacular" and indigenous knowledge or 'folk culture' are being completely rejected as worthy of scientific value, and are instead relegated to anthropological curiosities (Orr 9-10).

The problem is not that the United States is failing...
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