Why EFS? Why educate for a sustainable future?
Our planetary future depends on it. It's as simple as that.
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Our education system served the 19th and 20th centuries well enough but in today’s world we need to be sending out from our schools young people who can think for themselves yet operate collaboratively to produce creative solutions to the local and global problems we face. These problems are so often created by our ignorance both of the connectivity between our life sustaining systems, and of the profound need to be able to work across political, cultural and social divides if we are to truly say we are working toward a sustainable future.
The NZ curriculum (2007) offers us the chance to re-direct and re- energize our education system so that we may prepare our young people for an exciting and dynamic yet unpredictable future. The Curriculum’s vision portrays the ‘product’ of schooling as being confident, connected, actively involved lifelong learners. Its principles encourage students to engage with four future focused themes: sustainability, citizenship, enterprise, and globalisation.
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The values to be woven throughout learning programmes again support sustainability education especially community participation and ecological sustainability. All these aspects are exactly what educating for a sustainable future provides; "it is a lifelong learning process that leads to an informed and involved citizenry having the creative problem-solving skills, scientific and social literacy, and commitment to engage in responsible individual and cooperative actions. These actions will help ensure an environmentally sound and economically prosperous future." (Concord Consortium, 2005).
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And, as the UNESCO website states, “ESD is fundamentally about values, with respect at the centre .. along with a sense of justice, responsibility, exploration and dialogue."
The time to be getting into the swing of EfS is now; we are nearing the end of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. We had the opportunity to do something extra-ordinary in our education system yet our recent governments have done little to encourage us to act sustainably or to become action competent.
“A sustainability revolution requires each person to act as a learning leader at some level, from family to community to nation to the world.”
Donatella Meadows