David W. Orr

David W. Orr is an environmental educator whose scholarship connects learning, ecological responsibility, and the design of institutions. Earth in Mind argues that environmental decline is also an educational problem because schools shape values, habits, and assumptions about human relationships with the living world. Island Press first published the collection in 1994 as Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect, followed by a revised anniversary edition in 2004. Orr served as the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College and helped establish ecological design as a practical part of campus education. His work on the Adam Joseph Lewis Center showed how a building could teach through its energy, water, and material systems. Across the essays, he challenges narrow career training and asks education to cultivate judgment, wonder, competence, and care. The book remains central to his wider argument that ecological literacy belongs throughout a curriculum rather than inside one specialized subject. Its questions continue to shape conversations about teaching for ecological resilience.