Connecting the Dots: An Essay Series

When I was little I used to enjoy those little books with dots and numbers. As I traced a line from dot to dot following an increasing sequence of numbers an image slowly emerged. No longer were there just a bunch of seemingly random dots on a page. Now the dots made sense.

Nowadays, in my work at the university, I frequently challenge students to “connect the dots”—to make sense of what’s going on in the world. The daily newspaper serves as wonderful source material for this practice of discerning connections. Day after day the headlines come at us: collapsed economies, toxic spills, new computer technologies, civil wars, corporate mergers, genetic engineering breakthroughs, acts of terrorism, record growth, and so on. These headlines catch our attention but many of us are unable, or unwilling, to see the connections among news events. For example, I looked at the front page of my local newspaper one November morning and saw headlines announcing: 1) the temperature of the Earth had reached a record high; and 2) holiday shopping was breaking all past records. In class that same day, I asked my students if they saw any connection between these two records—a hotter Earth and record holiday shopping. At first they seemed baffled but then someone pointed out that all the stuff society is consuming is made, transported, and disposed of using energy (fossil fuels) and the burning of these fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide to the atmosphere which is contributing to climate destabilization.

Such connections are everywhere. As educator, David Orr, cogently observes in Earth in Mind: They are part of a larger pattern that includes: shopping malls and decaying downtowns, sprawling suburbs and the loss of farmland, crowded freeways and climate change, overstocked supermarkets and soil erosion, cheap electricity and acid rain, hazardous wastes and childhood cancers.

Inspired in part by Orr, I write a column for my local newspaper, The Centre Daily Times, under the moniker, “Connecting the Dots.” The selection of essays presented here is organized into five themes: 1) Searching for opportunity in a time of crisis; 2) Rethinking education; 3) Awakening to wonder; 4) What we believe, we become; and 5) Taking a stand.