FEATURED POST

Our global community is on the threshold of a perfect storm: the confluence of years-long resistance to facing up to global climate changes that we have caused, together with the corona virus pandemic, the weakening of democracies around the globe and of transnational global collaborations, as well as the climate catastrophe itself.

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One important contributing factor to all these challenges is the way we educate our children and our selves. An overly fact-based, hierarchical and restrictive form of education has created citizenries across the world who are unable to think – in depth, creatively and systemically – and who are primed to participate passively in systems of power, disinformation and consumption. Our subsequent inability to act – to scope out the situation and make changes – means that we are unable to solve problems together, nationally and internationally, that we are letting democracies and other tools for equity and justice deteriorate, and are vigorously destroying our human habitat.

Addressing our problems requires a series of changes or transitions, two of which take precedence. One is the sustainability transition, so that we can begin to meet humanity’s basic needs for water, food, energy and shelter, while safeguarding our human habitat, and at the same time move towards preserving the atmosphere, the waterways and the ecosystems of the planet for our children and grandchildren. To do this, however, each of us needs to transition our mindset to be able to understand the larger picture and our part in it.

Thus, the second required transition concerns itself with radically changing the way we educate our children and ourselves. Radical, because it is not merely necessary to change the content of our education, but the very manner in which we educate. I’ll have a lot to say about the silent curriculum; the ways in which our mindset and worldview is determined by the way we do education.

To my mind, education is the key to unlocking the door to a more sustainable tomorrow: to changing our mindset, thinking up new solutions, taking new action, to surviving, and then to creating a more equitable, just and sustainable global society. Lofty goals, indeed.

What is it, then, about education? What are the bittings – the notches and tiny teeth – on the key that unlocks that door?

That is what this website is about; what doors our current set of keys unlock and why, what role education plays, what sustainability transition is, and what you and I can do to be a part of this movement.