When environmental education manifests itself in schools, it is usually a simple matter of the insertion of an environment-related activity into the science, or perhaps social studies, curriculum. However, if one finds a teacher who has "the ethic," the entire school might be "green." The fact that this ethic is spreading through a relatively well organized and rapidly expanding field of theory and practice, grounded in research and philosophical thought, that challenges many of the taken-for-granted assumptions of the dominant educational discourses, may be a cause for concern in some quarters. Those teachers who are happy in standard practice may not want to hear about "the alternative," the critiques of business-as-usual in the field of education, whether from environmental education or other related areas such as social justice and cultural studies. The purpose of this article is to explore some issues of worth concerning what takes place in schools and in teacher education from this vantage point of environmental education, as a field that challenges the taken-for-granted assumptions of the dominant discourses of schooling. Here, the author argues that the socially critical charter of the field of environmental education has meaningful things to say to mainstream education that, if taken seriously, can provide the means to transform one's thinking about some things that really matter in schooling. (Contains 1 note.)