For a sustainable future, education is key

If you want people to care about the environment, educate them. Rethinking the purpose of education in environmentalism is just what the new book Sustainability, Human Well-being and the Future of Education suggests, bringing together the best global expertise in the field.

The open-access book focuses on how future education systems can help individuals and communities to promote well-being while addressing major sustainability challenges.

Until recently, education systems have mostly prepared students to perform certain social functions in a relatively predictable world. However, the world is changing and we can no longer expect the same old same old. Today’s students will soon need to deal with complex sustainability challenges, which requires totally new skills and attitudes to be developed.

Building on case studies from Finland and the US, scholars and practitioners provide an understanding of the transformation education system requires in the face of rapid environmental and societal changes. Crucially there is a shift from widespread anxiety over mounting environmental disasters towards positive approaches, full of actionable hope for a better world.

Among the effective methods to promote it is the development of a reflexive worldview, which constantly evolves awareness about factors shaping one’s thoughts, habits and ideas about how the world works, to which the chapter by Erkka Laitinen from the OKKA Foundation of Teaching from Finland is devoted.

In societies faced by injustices and inequalities, learning for social cohesion is a must. Only through creating stories of “us” that nourish communal spirit while acknowledging the inherent diversity can we hope for a peaceful run through this coming turbulent century. We are also living in a time when the development of soft skills like collaboration and communication is no less important than any practical skills acquired by students.

A particular focus of one of the chapters is on creativity, design-thinking and arts-based learning, explored by Linda Nathan, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Creative and systematic problem solving, critical thinking and empathy towards the natural world, she emphasizes, are invaluable skills that future education systems should sharpen as much much as possible.

Meanwhile, author Asta Raami develops this idea further into exploring the unique and far-reaching benefits of using intuitions for solving complex problems. While doing so, it is important to keep an eye on the real world – allowing students to deal with actual challenges in different societal contexts. The approach is practiced in some of the schools in California and explored by Robert Riordan from the High Tech High Graduate School of Education in San Diego.

Another example is the Developers of Sustainable Education, an experimental training program that brings together teachers, school principals and education professionals to discuss topics in the book and explore its suggestions in practice.

Finally, when it comes to the meaning and purpose of education, Justin Cooks, editor of the book from SITRA, points out that we currently have more questions than answers, but the key role of “deep understanding of our rapidly-changing society” is hard to dispute. “When there is a lot of information, also mutually conflicting information, those who can synthesise, or pick what is essential and combine information, will be most successful,” says Cook. We are “at the edge of history”, where “nothing is given, and everything is a frontier”.

And we’ll have to learn to live with this.