BOWDOIN COLLEGE • December 7, 2022
The genesis for Charles Dorn’s new education class on the teaching of the environment (and his latest book project) came from a source you might not necessarily associate with academic inspiration—Walt Disney nature documentaries called Disney’s True-Life Adventures. Dorn said that educating children about the environment has traditionally been done as a way of teaching them other things, rather than promoting a true scientific understanding of nature. The Disney documentaries often promoted American, middle-class family values, presenting a sentimentalized version of the natural world that lends human characteristics to animals.