Think Piece: What Education is of Most Worth in a World Where We Are Consuming the Future of our Children? (original) (raw)
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This essay critically examines how education has and can support societies in becoming more sustainable and responding to the global challenge of climate change, with a focus on the involvement of children and young people globally and then in the context of the United Kingdom. It employs a systematic approach to provide an overview of the issue of climate change, theories, models, framework, and policies in a global context while streamlining and focusing on the United Kingdom. To achieve this, the essay is divided into three sections. The first section introduces key concepts of education and climate change, as well as theories and models appropriate for the discourse. The second section considered the subject in a broader global context in terms of policies and the involvement of children and young people, while the third section takes a critical look at the United Kingdom in terms of policies and practices, as well as ongoing efforts in education to bring the subject to the attention of children and young people in British communities to deal with the challenges. The essay also identifies the gains and gaps from literature and practical works, and it provides details with practical examples of what has been done as well as areas where more work from the existing literature is required. Before delving into the main points of this essay, it is necessary to define the concepts that underpin the discourse in this piece while also drawing on the connections between the two, that is, education and climate change. Doing this will lay the groundwork for clarity and criticality, as well as provide an appropriate insight into the sections covered in this essay. Education for What? Education and its purpose have been seen in different lights by commentators and experts over the years (Biesta, 2015). In one sense, it is regarded as a deliberate and systematic process of acquiring knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes, including learning from sustained efforts (Cremin, Public Education, 1976 p. 27), and the act of
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Education is traditionally seen as the process whereby children —as newcomers to the world—are guided by adults into the community of shared meaning, which Hannah Arendt has described as a common world. According to Arendt (2006a), being an educator means accepting a position of authority whose assurance is taking responsibility for the world such as it is. For only responsible adults can assist children into a position of renewing the world when their time comes. The chapter discusses Hannah Arendt's notion of authority in education in the context of child activism and climate change, making an argument as to why the current situation is untenable from a political and educational perspective. Coining the concept of a pedagogy of the extraordinary, inspired by Andreas Kalyvas' "extraordinary politics" I consider the educational dilemmas connected with this position. The chapter is part of a Festschrift for Norwegian professor in philosophy Arne Johan Vetlesen.
Journal of curriculum theorizing, 2019
It is now evident that the earth’s ecology and social systems cannot sustain continued expansion of capitalist productivity, consumerism, and neoliberal notions of progress based on market fundamentalism, the commodification of society, and the privatization of public goods. Neoliberal policy, based on an ideology of unbounded self-interest, endless growth, and expansion released from any notions of constraint are environmentally and ethically indefensible. This view of endless growth sees “the world as something that exists only to gratify human desires” (Lasch, 1991, p. 527) and has perpetuated exploitative, colonial-imperial policies and political arrangements that favor dominant groups (Torres, 2017). This paper makes the case for curriculum theorizing to envision forms of ecocentric and justice-oriented consciousness education that starts from the premise of the need for environmental limits, while emphasizing social justice and democratic practices, to forge solidarity across ...
'being more, not having more' Education for global change
Earth Charter Education is currently the most ambitious and extensive initiative to pursue a more peaceful, just and sustainable world through education. It has historical antecedents in the socially-critical education movements of the past several decades. Earth Charter Education, however, has some features likely to produce more success than those earlier initiatives. At the same time, it faces some substantial obstacles. This article highlights one of those obstacles – the contradiction between Earth Charter principles and the commodified consumer culture within which most young people in wealthier countries are immersed. The author sees promise in Earth Charter Education's advocacy of experientially-rich learning. A perplexing episode Several years ago I presented a guest session at an elite girls' school. I spoke to senior students about work, trade and justice in our globalizing world. They'd just begun a term-long study of those issues. At the end of their study I asked their teacher how they had responded. She described their interest, enthusiasm and sense of moral outrage at what they had learned about their world. They clearly appreciated the opportunity she'd offered them to engage with some stark global connections. But, she added, they were bemused by her suggestion that some of them might consider becoming teachers themselves and doing similar work with young people. No, they insisted, teaching lacked both status and financial reward. In the main, their sights were set on careers in law, business and similarly rewarding areas. That simple episode seems to encapsulate a paradox that bedevils attempts to teach for a 'better world'. On the one hand, Australian classrooms abound with critical and challenging studies of (for example) global injustice. On the other, it seems such studies can fail to touch the hearts and minds of young people with enough force to change the way they see their own place in the world. In this article I explore both sides of this paradox, with particular reference to educational initiatives linked to the Earth Charter movement. In the main I focus on the minority world 1. The roots of most social and environmental problems around the globe can be traced to the wealthiest nations and peoples of the world. Nothing will change unless minority world people and their institutions change what they value and what they do. That is where Earth Charter Education's most vital work will be done. Increasingly, however, much of what is analysed and advocated in this article applies to the rapidly-growing, aspirational middle classes in India and China.
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In this paper, I present four metaphors or narratives that unapologetically raise "a thousand questions" about education and do not provide any clear cut answers. My intention is to raise the stakes in our collective struggle with the joys, challenges and dilemmas involved in enacting education beyond historical patterns that have cultivated unsustainable and harmful forms of collective relationships and have limited human possibilities for imagining (and doing) otherwise. My own focus in this paper is concerned particularly with the urgency of imagining education in ways that can pluralize possibilities for relationships in the present with a view of pluralizing possibilities for collective futures (Nandy, 2000) that may enable a "non-coercive relationship with the excluded 'Other' of Western humanism" (Gandhi, 1998, p. 39).
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This article argues that schooling's driving purpose should be to educate. Given heightening global crises and the potential of education to respond, we agree with the spirit and focus of UNESCO's (2021) A new social contract for education intervention. Education/schooling should be motivated by progressive, critical visions to contribute to more sustainable and just human and planetary futures. Embodied-affective-cognitive technologically-mediated processes of becoming educated, however, are not a force that can smash injustice or ecologically destructive capitalism. Educationally speaking, there is no shortcut to cultivating students as "change agents" for sustainable futures. Hannah Arendt's essay "The crisis in education" (2006) is instructive in clarifying the function of schooling and in categorically distinguishing adults from children, education from politics, and education from learning. While human learning proliferates in multiple ways independent of existential/ethical mooring, education ultimately requires committed adults spending time with, and socioemotionally and intellectually supporting, children to deepen their understanding of the world and others, giving meaning and significance to their/our lives as part of larger collectives called upon to sustain and renew a common world.