Education for a World in Transition

Our educational system ought to be built around a nuanced understanding of ecology, earth systems, and our place within them. Would we be facing the intersection of human and geologic time in the form of climate and ecological catastrophe right now if government and business leaders had earned degrees in Human Ecology? Or Earth systems? If they had to, as part of their formal education, learn how to grow organic food and care for farm animals? To harvest or slaughter, store or process, and cook that food for their community? To live in and be accountable to a community? I doubt it. Because every policy or business decision would have to be made in the context of living on a physically finite planet, informed by real, face-to-face interactions with humans, other animals, and the living systems that enable us to live here.

Philosophers of education understand this.

As Zak Stein writes in his book, Education in a Time Between Worlds:

"Our world is currently undergoing major transformations, from climate change and politics to agriculture and economics. The world we have known is disappearing and a new world is being born. The subjects taught in schools and universities today are becoming irrelevant at faster and faster rates. Not only are we facing complex challenges of unprecedented size and scope, we’re also facing a learning and capacity deficit that threatens the future of civilization."

Instead of treating climate literacy as a side dish to the main educational meal, as a 'green' caboose at the end of a business-as-usual train to a career in 'smart'-innovation/ investing/ extraction/ 'green' growth, it must be the focus. Hiring more administrators to create 'eco-initiatives' within the same institutional structures will not aid in preparing students for their futures. Their future will be unlike anything humanity has ever experienced, whether we in the global north manage to reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly or not. As longshoreman and reluctant philosopher, Eric Hoffer wrote: 

"In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."

Education as it stands now is in real danger of going the way of the dinosaurs (sans bolide impact), let alone not doing its professed job of preparing students to contribute to the world. When alternative models for education are brought up, they are all too often dismissed as utopian, unrealistic, or unscalable to the gigantic, mega-institutional size of many prominent universities today. This is a form of climate denial.

These are excuses to not consider fully the reality of what our world is facing: a literal existential crisis in the near-term, during the lives of those born today. I am not claiming that humans will go extinct in 40 years, not at all- but if the Global North continues on its present path of unmitigated extraction and emissions, billions of people, animals, living things, will suffer and die, and judging by the geologic past, we will be on the path to extinction. At some point, the unfolding trauma will preclude the desire or need for traditional higher education for many. Ahmed Afzaal describes the response of colleges and universities to our present world-in-transition as a lack of imagination:

"decision-makers have assumed that higher education’s leadership and management model is basically sound and need not be questioned, let alone changed in fundamental ways. They have assumed that better alternatives either don’t exist at all or, if they do, are too utopian for the real world. Any attempt to modify how colleges are run is futile, either because the current model cannot be improved upon or because the effort required is not worth it."

I would argue that, given what the scientific consensus says about climate science and our present climate and ecological emergencies, we have no logical choice but to strive for the utopian, to make the 'unrealistic' reality, to down-scale education until it fits in the safe planetary operating space for humanity. We need to fire up our sleepy imaginations and get to work.

Reposted from https://www.drheathershort.com/ with permission.