Ecohumanism, democratic culture and activist pedagogy: Attending to what the known demands of us

Abstract

In two different occasions in the twentieth century John Dewey and Maxine Greene stressed the point that educators should attend to ‘what the known demands of us’. Following this dictum, from a critical perspective and with a constructive pedagogical spirit, in this paper we portray a new paradigm for values education that addresses the major challenges to the sustainable futures of young people in the third decade of the twenty first century as well as proposing transformative and empowering educational strategies. Employing the terminology of sustainability in its wider sense, we begin with a widely acknowledged diagnosis of the five major global risks – interconnected and interdependent – that endanger the sustainable future of humanity and nature: environmental, political, social, health, and cultural. We then move to suggest a constructive solution, proposing three conceptual pillars for repairing the world and laying foundation for a thriving sustainable future: (a) Ecohumanism as the paradigm for values education – merging the humanist concern for human dignity, social justice and democracy with the ecological concern for climate stability, biodiversity and environmental sustainability; (b) education of democratic personality and for democratic culture that is holistic and transformative; and (c) a threefold notion of activist pedagogy that addresses the element of cultivating personal agency, empowering political literacy and agency, and engaging students in experiential, holistic, and active teaching-learning experiences.

Keywords:

• Ecohumanism
• democratic culture
• activist pedagogy
• sustainability

John Dewey in Democracy and Education (1966, p. 326) and Maxine Greene in ‘Doing Philosophy and Building a World’ (1973, p. 21) made the point that it should be expected of teachers to be attentive to ‘what the known demands’ of us—as teachers. Following this dictum, from a critical perspective and with a constructive pedagogical spirit, in this paper we would like to portray a new paradigm for values education that addresses the major challenges to the sustainable futures of the young in the third decade of the twenty first century as well as proposing transformative and empowering educational strategies. We shall first address the concern of many people that humanity is currently struggling with a multidimensional crisis—both ecological and cultural—that threatens the future of young generations. The worldview and paradigm for values education that we propose as a remedy to this crisis is Ecohumanism. Then we proceed to a discussion of various conceptions of civic education and education for democratic citizenship, and in the spirit of the educational manifesto of the Council of Europe, Competences for Democratic Culture (2016) we are proposing a shift to a holistic and transformative version of political education—education of democratic personality and democratic culture. Coming to the third and final phase of our paper, we shall set forth a notion of activist pedagogy, to be implemented in all levels of education, that consists of activating and empowering personal agency, political agency, and engagement in experiential, holistic outdoor, and participatory teaching-learning experiences.

Facing a multi-dimensional global crisis

Let us begin with a diagnosis of the major global risks to the wellbeing of contemporary humans and to the sustainable futures of the younger generations.¹ Employing the terminology of sustainability in its wider sense—stable and long-lasting vitality of environmental and social systems that are valuable for the flourishing of humankind and nature—we identify five major areas or dimensions of crisis and risk:

• Environmental crisis, consisting of global warming, biodiversity extinction, and pollution of natural resources and oceans.

• Political crisis, consisting of erosion of liberal democracies and young nations into populist authoritarian regimes and the rise of political extremism and violence.

• Social crisis, consisting of growing economic and social gaps, gross inequalities in educational opportunities, marginalization of larger populations and millions of refugees.

• Health crisis, consisting of physical and mental degeneration due to destructive consumption of junk food and junk culture, social distancing, addiction to drugs and digital technologies, stressful work environment, pandemics, and absence of adequate health care.

• Cultural crisis, consisting of decline in the commitment to serious culture and to the quest for full humanity– including the all-encompassing elements of consumerism, digital technology and commercialization that drain people of their humanity, respect for the liberal arts and social sciences, and the ideals and values of wisdom, truth, justice, beauty, intimacy, dialogue – as well as to the conservation of the riches of diverse cultures and local knowledge systems around the globe (cultural heritage).²

Regarding the attentiveness of teachers to ‘what the known demands of them’ and the predicaments and challenges that are characteristic of the era, it is clear to us that in facing a multi-dimensional global crisis—that threatens the vitality and sustainability of both humankind and mother earth—we can no longer perceive these challenges as separate arenas. In turn, they should be seen as comprising a system in which they are intertwined and affect one another.³ Moreover, as argued in both academic papers and activists’ demonstrations, it seems that violence and devastation against humans and violence and devastation against nature have quite similar motives and characteristics: rising from egoistic and greedy pursuit of self-aggrandizement, social status, economic profit and other forms of superiority and privilege; showing moral disregard for the dignity and wellbeing of others and to the common good in the social and natural environments; present populist propaganda as rational discourse; and falsely justify socio-environmental injustices.⁴

Acknowledging the nature and scope of these elements, consisting of destructive ‘fundamental disposition, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and fellow-men [fellow humans]’⁵ it is clear to us that as engaged and critical educationalists ‘the known demands of us’ to form a new holistic and integrative educational paradigm for empowering the younger generations and teaching them to successfully address the multidimensional crisis of the twenty first century. It involves a worldview, ethical stance, and activist pedagogy that would enable educators to cultivate in the young and equip them with insights, sensitivities, and abilities for facilitating a thriving and just life in the face of manifold global risks.⁶

Ecohumanism

We started with an overview of contemporary crises. An activist and pedagogical approach, however, focuses not in the first place on crises but on possibilities for a better world. It is our task as educators to present a positive orientation to address challenges and to create a sustainable and just world for all its inhabitants. We believe Ecohumanism is the timeliest and most appropriate paradigm for addressing our educational task.⁷ It consists in combining the humanist commitment to human dignity, social justice, and democracy with the ecological commitment to climate stability, biological diversity, and sustainability of natural resources. It moreover calls for merging the humanist ‘I and Thou’ dialogical interpersonal relations (cherishing the humanity of every person as an end in itself) with the ecological consideration of nature not as a commodity to own and use egotistically but as a community to join harmoniously and respectfully. It requires us to learn how to live with others and not at the expense of others; stopping the exploitation of both the human and the other species than human; enabling others—human beings and other living species—to sustain themselves at their best, in accordance with their nature and in harmony with the rest.⁸

The attractivity and validity of the paradigm of Ecohumanism goes beyond a simple linguistic merger of ecology and humanism. It is in agreement with some of the most well-known and esteemed models and narratives of sustainability. For example, it reflects the concern for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (covering elements of wellbeing, equity, education, and environmental sustainability), The Donut model of sustainable development (consisting of social foundation, to ensure that no one is left falling short on life’s essentials, and an ecological ceiling, to ensure the sustainability of the natural environment), and the recent remedies proposed by David Attenborough in A Life on Our Planet (2020), emphasizing the Inextricably bound ecological concern for climate stability, the natural resources and biodiversity with humanist concerns for greater equity and raising the quality of life of all members of humanity. In his own word: achieving ‘a life of balance with the natural world’ (p. 203), requires our species to adopt a philosophy of ‘Sustainability in all things…to improve the lives of people everywhere, while at the same time radically reducing our impact of the world’ (p. 128). It call, as Michael Bonnett put it, to rid ourselves from the comforting yet false illusion that our socio-environmental crisis can be solved by scientific knowledge and technological innovations, technical, and to fully acknowledge that the solution is located in the sphere of ethical discourse and moral education; namely, that we ‘need to fundamentally change our underlying conceptions of the good life’ (2012, p.285).

Competences for democratic culture

As we shall see later, in the discussion of activist pedagogy, at the heart of ecohumanist pedagogy serves both ecological and humanist concerns, but beforehand let us turn to another transformation. It focuses on the political area and consists in the realization that in our practicing of education for democratic citizenship we should move from the sole emphasis on knowledge in civic studies to emphasis on democratic culture and democratic personality. This point has been articulated clearly and forcefully in the document of the Council of Europe Competences for Democratic Culture: Living together as equals in culturally diverse democratic societies:

While democracy cannot exist without democratic institutions and laws, such institutions and laws cannot work in practice unless they are grounded in a culture of democracy, that is, in democratic values, attitudes and practices…. [it involves the significant realization of] the interdependence between a culture of democracy and intercultural dialogue in culturally diverse societies: in such societies, intercultural dialogue is vital to ensure the inclusion of all citizens in democratic discussion, debate, and deliberation (2016, p. 9).

In line with the famous statements of Thoreau that ‘law never made men a wit more just’ and that ‘undue respect for law’ often leads to senseless wars and mass atrocities (1962, p. 237)—an observation made in the nineteenth century that proved true in the political horrors humanity inflicted itself in the twentieth century—our conception of political education for democratic citizenship should aim not at a cognitive mastery of a body of civic knowledge but in the cultivation from early age on of democratic personality and democratic culture. Democracy, in this wider sense, as articulated by Dewey in Democracy of education, is not merely a political social order but first and foremost a pluralist and nourishing social climate and a communal and mutual growth-promoting form of life (Dewey, 1966; Bernstein, 2008). It is a humanist political culture in which everyone is considered equal, everyone is free, everyone is counted and heard, and everyone has a voice and is given the rights, conditions, and opportunities for self-actualization as well as for acting as an equal and meaningful participant in the dialogical formation of the common good. A formation that tries as best to value different perspectives and avoids a dictation of the majority.

Education for democratic culture, therefore, should be viewed as ‘the process of forming [democratic] fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, towards nature and fellow men (Dewey, 196, p. 328). It is more like initiation into a civic ethos, and it occurs mainly, as Biesta put it, ‘what children and young people experience in their everyday lives about democratic ways of acting and being and about their own positions as citizens’ (2011, p. 1). Cultivation of such dispositions, habits of character or political virtues, should begin, as Aristotle suggested, at a very early age, since ‘it makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another, from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference’. (p. 1980. p 29).

It would be impossible in this article to portray and discuss all the elements involved in the formation of democratic personalities and democratic culture. We shall limit ourselves to two models. The first, introduced in the earlier mentioned document Competences for Democratic Culture (Council of Europe, 2016), categorizes the competences or dispositions in four groups. The first one focuses on valuing human dignity, human rights, cultural diversity, democracy, justice, fairness, and the rule of law. The second stresses the importance of capabilities such as autonomous and critical thinking, empathetic imagination, flexibility and adaptability, linguistic and communicative skills, co-operation, and conflict resolution skills. The third category includes attitudes such as openness to cultural otherness, tolerance of ambiguity, civic minded, and self-efficacy. And the fourth category consists of knowledge and critical understanding of manifold realms of self, society, history, politics, nature, and culture.⁹

The second model, titled Critical-Democratic Citizenship Education, merges the autonomy oriented and social-engagement oriented forms of democratic citizenship—combining independent thinking and personal responsibility with social concern for the common good and social justice (Veugelers 2007, 2019).¹⁰ This model rejects the adaptive conservative model that seeks to socialize young people into established sets of ideals and norms and form them as obedient and submissive conformists. It similarly finds lacking the ‘personal autonomy’ model for its emphasis on strong individualism and personal fulfillment—often resulting in social atomization, disregard for the lived reality of others, and indifference to the communal and political common good.

We believe that the critical-democratic model has made the notion of citizenship not only more articulated and diverse but also has deepened and broadened it (Veugelers, 2011). Originally the concept of citizenship was only used on the political-national level, but in the past decades it has been broadened into the social and cultural level. It now also encompasses issues of identity and includes relationships and values and norms a society favors. The new concept of citizenship has also crossed the national border to a more regional citizenship (like the European citizenship), and to the global level. In this new approach, the discourse and conduct related to citizenship address the living together on the planet earth, and focusing on issues and concerns such as the power relations and interdependence involved in global neo-liberal economy, mass migrations, global warming, growing social gaps, and violation of environmental justice.

As contended earlier, citizenship education—that cultivates democratic personality and establishes democratic culture—is not limited to the mastery of knowledge but involves experiences of the students in schools that exemplify democratic climate (including reflective, dialogical, and democratic learning) and teachers that set example of democratic conduct (Dewey, 1966; Power, Higgins & Kohlberg, 1989; Apple & Beane, 1995). In line with our endorsement of the critical-democratic model of citizenship, it is also essential to note the social and cultural composition of students and teachers (Veugelers, 2019). Often people argue for more democratic educational practices without taking into consideration these social and cultural contexts that are shaping experiences—students as individuals are always socially embedded and the creation of meaning and formation of dispositions are influenced to a great extent by the social-cultural setting. Hence, inclusion of a social and cultural diversity of students and teachers in schools is needed to transcend the experience from an own group feeling to a living and learning together of a diverse group of students and teachers. Or in the words of Putnam (2000), for both bonding and bridging. Diversity should be an element of all discourses and practices of citizenship education.

Activist pedagogy

In turning to the third pillar in this paper, to develop practices of activist pedagogy, we should bear in mind that it is often employed in different ways. In our discussion the notion of activist pedagogy draws on three theoretical traditions: 1. the naturalists and existentialists criticism, from different points of view, of human inertia, artificiality, and submissiveness, and their celebration of personal authentic vitality and self-agency; 2. the praxis oriented Critical Pedagogy and its emphasis on social empowerment, collaboration, transformative education, and political agency; and 3. the progressive-humanist educationalists with their emphasis on active holistic experiential learning. Hence activist pedagogy in this context consists of three complementing elements—serving the educational aims of enhancing human agency, struggling to establish social justice and environmental sustainability, and combating all forms of dehumanization and social marginalization.

As noted above, the first element consists of educational practices that activate and empower the individual’s self-agency. These include a sense of self-worth and self-respect, ‘his conviction that his plan of life is worth carrying out’ (Rawls, 1971, p. 440), the capacities of autonomous and critical thinking, creative and imaginative powers, and the authentic ability to generate one’s unique mode of being in the world. It amounts to activating educational development from being a sociological object to being an autonomous individual and self-generating subject (Nietzsche, 1968, 1965a, 1965b; Ortega, 1957; Greene, 1973, 1974; Higgins, 2011).

It is worth noting that the notion of personal agency draws on both the rationalists’ conception of critical autonomy and the existentialist notion of creative authenticity—what might be phrased as daring to think for yourself and daring to be yourself. Regarding the regulative ideal of personal and critical autonomy, it seeks to nurture human beings who have the ability and tendency to form their positions in rational, critical, and independent manners, so that they will be master of their thoughts and actions and not herd-like prisoners of external authority, social conventions, prejudice, superstition, habits and fashion. In the philosophy of Spinoza, for example, it amounts to life in accordance with reason—leading one’s life in loyalty to the highest innate element in one’s nature rather than being shaped by external powers. In Kant’s philosophy (1973), enlightened autonomy is identified with extricating our consciousness from its heterogeneous existence—from inertial servility to external authority and social conventions—and instead develop and establish autonomous and critical consciousness which is suitable for the adult personality. This view finds its most eloquent articulation in Berlin’s portrayal of personal and critical autonomy as positive freedom:

I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind, I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes which are my own, not by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a doer – deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them… I wish above all to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for his choices and able to explain them by reference to his own ideas and purposes (1969, p.178).

Considering the notion of personal authenticity, this involves leading one’s life with special attention, respect, and loyalty to his or her human existence and unique nature. Such individuals produce their life-plan and spiritual content through self-nourishment and self-motivation, and adhere to the compatibility between the content of their inner world and its manifestation in public behavior. In praising people for their personal authenticity, we are expressing our special respect for them for not being ‘inertial’, routine, ‘molded’, ‘die cast’, ‘standard’, banal, artificial, fake, self-alienated, robot-like, or simply a poseur—whose inner life is hollow and he, or she, is nothing more than pretentious and empty of any real content.¹¹

It should be noted, as mentioned above, that education for personal authenticity draws on both naturalist and existentialist traditions. In the first one, which usually goes back to Rousseau, the starting point is the recognition that bourgeois persons ‘wants nothing as nature made it’ (p. 37) and from an early age force children to obey external authority instead of being attentive to their inner voice and unique personality. They are supposed to fall into line with social convention, instead of deriving the meaning of their existence and defining their identity based on the yearning, emotions and insights that characterize their inner world. In the twentieth century, we find harsh criticism of the damage that results from such alienating education in the words of the humanist psychologist Maslow, that most people are ‘out of touch with their own inner signals. They eat, defecate, and go to sleep by the clock’s cues, rather than by the cues of their own bodies. They use external criteria for everything from choosing their food and clothing to questions of values and ethics’ (1971, p. 184).

The existentialist version of education for authentic life—employed here as a means for enhancing personal agency—denies any external or internal authority as anchoring ground: be it universal rationality or inner nature. It views ‘man as and open being’, challenged to freely and creatively, employing the metaphor of artistic creation, fashion their own identity and way of life. In the terminology of Nietzsche, the aim of education in this spirit is to enhance the student’s ability to become ‘a self-propelled wheel’ (1968, pp. 174–175). It is ‘to become those we are—human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves’ (1974, Sec. 335). It amounts to empowering the student’s personal agency and helping them become fellow creators who ‘write new values on new tablets’ (1968, p. 136). And in still another metaphor, if challenges the young ‘to give style to one’s character’ (1974, sec. 290) as well as ‘placing upon themselves the strenuous demand to achieve full and valuable existence: my existence will be full and worthy only to the extent that I make of myself something of value—living as a work of art’ (Zemach, 1999).

Coming now to the social-political element of activist pedagogy, emerging from the theory and practice of Critical Pedagogy, it is suspicious of unrestrained individualistic education for autonomous and authentic personality, because it often ends up in a highly atomistic and narcissistic outlook and conduct. Since it is our view that ‘no man is an island’, that humans are social beings, and that one’s identity, conduct, and fate are formed to a great extent by one’s social and political circumstances, we can make the move from personal agency to political agency by means of employing the observation of the existentialist and social thinker Buber in the horrible and devastating times of the early twentieth century: ‘host upon host of men [humans] have everywhere sunk into the slavery of collectives, and each collective is the supreme authority for its own slaves… It is first necessary to be a person again, to rescue one’s real personal self from the fiery jaws of collectivism which devours all self-hood’. (1971, pp. 491–492).

These closing words of one dialogical pedagogue lead us to the themes of another dialogical pedagogue. It was Paolo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), who introduced his diagnosis that dehumanization has been the central problem of humanity, and therefore the principal task of education is to struggle against all mechanisms of dehumanization—to help humans become more fully human. His approach, however, is social and political rather than individualistic. The initial premise of Freire and other critical pedagogues is the realization that the fate of youth is mainly determined not in the education system, but rather in the social-political arena. It is determined in the policies that decide the extent to which all humans have equal opportunity to achieve a worthwhile and flourishing life. Its point of departure is the critical understanding that poverty and illiteracy, crime and drugs, wars and social gaps, ecological destruction, slavery, discrimination against women and minorities, technocratic thinking, political tyranny, and interpersonal alienation—these are all human made evils, arising from immoral power structures and social inequality, effecting the lives of the majority of the world’s children and directly or indirectly affect the development of children on the physical, emotional, mental, social and moral levels.

It is our view that considering this critical understanding, as Giroux puts it, educators around the world should engage themselves in the call to ‘struggle for ways in which the pedagogical can be made more political and the political made more pedagogical’ (1988, pp. 63–64). It is, in his view, a pedagogy of struggle, hence being a critical praxis that investigates modes of oppression, discrimination and dehumanization—aiming to make the teachers agents of social transformation and political democratization’ (1996, p.51). In other words, acknowledging the immense influence of social and environmental factors on the development and future of the young, activist educators should be expected to carry out their professional mission not only in the academic sphere but also in the political one. It calls for a shift in the professional self-image of teachers from functionalist agents of socialization into active advocates of human flourishing, social justice, and pluralist democracy—not only in schools but also in the social and the political spheres (Aloni, 2017; Aloni & Weintrob, 2017). Going back now to the words of Buber, the social-political element of activist pedagogy does not negate the individualistic element with its emphasis on personal autonomy and authenticity but dialectically complement it—aiming at building a more humane, just and democratic society (Aloni, 2017; Aloni & Weintrob 2017; Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1988, 1989; Simon, 1987; Greene, 1973). As Roger Simon puts it, to empower students, is not only to ‘encourage and make possible the realization of a variety of differentiated human capacities’ (1987, p. 372); ‘it also involves the political aspect of: enabling those who have been silenced to speak. It is to enable the self-affirming expression of experiences mediated by one’s history, language, and traditions. It is to enable those who have been marginalized economically and culturally to claim in both respects a status as full participating members of a community’. (1987, p. 374)

The third element of an activist pedagogy consists of hands-on holistic active learning methods, engaging hearts and minds, bodies and souls. It further involves fostering dialogical, project based, cooperative, outdoor, and problem solving teaching/learning events that are experiential, experimental, constructivist, meaningful and transformative—comprising the sensual, emotional, intellectual, and imaginative, as well as merging the personal with the public, and the authentic with the political (Aloni, 2011; Veugelers, 2019; Biesta, 2011; Miseliunaite, B., Kliziene, I., and Cibulskas, G. (2022). Laininen (2019). Very much in the spirit of Aristotle’s discussion of the formation of virtues of character, Rousseau’s notion of naturalistic upbringing, Mill’s insistence on ‘employing all one’s faculties’ (1962, p. 187), as well as the tradition of progressive education led by Dewey and his followers—they all point at the understanding that meaningful learning and effective moral and political education can be achieved only by facilitating the students to actively exercise their humanity and become more fully human.

It should be stressed however that in implementing active learning methods in this model of Ecohumanist education we are by no means limiting its value to effective learning and mastery of knowledge. As pointed out in the earlier discussions of personal agency and political agency, our goal is to make people livelier, more self-directed, more informed, more engaged and more empowered in the fashioning of their own identities as well as in their responsible contribution to the shared good, to deliberative democracy, and to planetary sustainability.

In the spirit of Maxwell’s Global Philosophy (2014), we hold it essential to merge the ‘tree of knowledge’ with the ‘tree of life’ and revolutionize schooling by shifting our orientation and dedication from the acquisition and inculcation of disciplinary knowledge to the exploration of the ways by which education can empower us to deal constructively, fruitfully, and successfully with our pressing real-life predicaments and challenges. In engaging students in active learning our overarching goal should be ‘making progress towards as good and as wise a world as possible’ (p. viii). It is the one crucial social and political challenge, Maxwell writes, of ‘how can our human world—and the world of sentient life more generally—imbued with the experiential, consciousness, free will, meaning, and value, exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? (p. 13) And from still another perspective, of Maxine Greene who exemplified marvelously in her philosophy the merging of educational empowerment for personal agency and political agency, our goal in moral and political education is to make our students morally ‘wide-awake’, enabling them to recognize lacks or deficiencies in their lived realities and act to repair and transcend them (1978, p. 19). It amounts to activate the students’ social concerns, critical thinking, and empathetic imagination and bringing them ‘to care about what is significant and worthwhile…[and] to enable them to learn how to learn, to make cognitive sense of their experience, to engage with their environments as perceptual and imaginative and feeling beings’ (1981, p. 31).

Conclusion

By way of conclusion, it should be pointed out that notwithstanding the sense of urgency in the face of the current multidimensional crisis, as a driving force in the formation of activist pedagogy of Ecohumanism, the notion of sustainable futures as much as of humanization and dehumanization are not fully new. Tough articulated in somewhat different terminologies, it Is worthy attending to some classical examples of such ideas originating in the Confucian tradition. It is already in the book of Great Learning that we find an acute concern for the virtue of harmony, justice, and sustainability in all circles of life—inner life, family, community, society, and universe (2016, pp. 11–12). More specific, is the supreme virtue of Ren, often translated as humaneness or benevolence, manifested in caring for the well-being and dignity of others, sustaining their life, and contributing to their personal growth. ‘The man of Ren’ is introduced as ‘one who, desiring to sustain himself, sustains others; and desiring to develop oneself, develops others’ (Confucius, 2015, Book 6, Sec. 30). Not less significant is the analysis of the mechanisms of dehumanization and sabotaging of the common good. Very much in the spirit of contemporary criticism of the destruction of society and nature brought about by the economic greed of neoliberalism, it is argued there that ‘when those higher and lower compete with one another for profit, the state will be in danger’ (Mencius, 2016, p. 18). When one’s cognitive and affective capacities are mobilized almost totally to economic efficiency and the maximization of profit and benefits, instead of caring for humanity and justice, it leaves hardly any room for attentive and responsive relations, meditative thinking, and moral conduct. The unavoidable result is that we ‘will ultimately be drained of humanity and right’ (ibid, p.117).

Two resembling classical examples in the western philosophical tradition we find in the writings of Spinoza and Kant. According to Spinoza’s naturalistic theory, ‘Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persist in its own being’ (1974, p. 270). However, unlike those who are corrupted by selfish primitive drives, Spinoza contends that ‘In so far only as men live in obedience to reason ‘do they always necessarily agree in nature’, and ‘the highest good of those who follow virtue is common to all, and therefore all can equally rejoice therein’. This results in the moral and political virtue, what we may designate humanist virtue, that ‘the good which every man who follows after virtue desires for himself, he will also desire for other men’ (Ibid, Book IV, sentences 35, 36, 37).¹² Here too, like in the Confucian tradition, Spinoza has harsh criticism of the kind of leadership that seeks privileges at the expanse of ruining society and dehumanize others. Not very different from the criticism against the contemporary ‘post truth’ populist leaders—founding a post-turth political environment and denying scientific knowledge and climate change,¹³ Spinoza accuses the leaders of society for ‘degrading man from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the power of judgment between true and false, which seem, in fact, carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark of reason’ (1951, Preface).

This brings us to the last example and the conclusion of our argument. It was Emmanuel Kant, in his discussion of education, that he posited the pedagogical principle that ‘Children ought to be educated, not for the present, but for a possibly improved condition of man in the future; that is, in a manner which is adapted to the idea of humanity and the whole destiny of man’ (1966, p. 14). Moreover, ‘It is only through the efforts of people of broader views, who take an interest in the universal good, and who are capable of entertaining the idea of a better condition of things in the future, that the gradual progress of human nature towards its goal is possible’ (Ibid, p. 17). However, since ‘Sovereigns look upon their subjects merely as tools for their own purposes’ (Ibid, p. 15), the unavoidable consequence for activist eco-humanist educators is to engage in their educational practice in manners that involve almost always ‘going against the current’. It means, as argued earlier, that in the face of our current multidimensional crises—ecological and cultural—teachers should make a shift in their professional self-image, from functionalist agents of socialization into active advocates of human flourishing, social justice, pluralist democracy, and environmental sustainability—not only in schools but also in the social and the political spheres.

Comparing to earlier conceptions of learning, personal development, environmental education, and education for democratic citizenship—often presented as distinct fields of study—the paradigm of activist pedagogy of Ecohumanism merges the humanist concern for democratic sustainability with the ecological concern for environmental sustainability and suggesting achieving these ends by means of empowering activist pedagogy. We start the linking of democracy with sustainability from a humanist perspective and a concern for autonomy and social justice of human beings. We tried to include in our theoretical framework a concern for nature and for sustainability of nature and the planet. We tried to include some notions of posthumanism and ecopedagogy in our narratives and we invite scholars from those perspectives to continue the dialogue on an activist pedagogy: to contribute to a thriving sustainable future of both humanity and nature.

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Notes on contributors

Nimrod Aloni

Prof. Nimrod Aloni is an educational philosopher and theorist who teaches at Kibbutzim College of Education, Tel Aviv, Israel, and throughout the years has taught as a visiting scholar at Teachers College – Columbia University (NY), Concordia University (Montreal), Wagner College (NY), Montclair state university (NJ), and the University of Humanistic Studies (Utrecht). He has published ten books and many articles: on the philosophies of Nietzsche and Spinoza and their relevance to education, on humanistic ethics and humanistic education, on activist pedagogy for shared life and world betterment, and in recent years on Ecohumanism and the challenges of repairing the world. At Kibbutzim College of Education, he holds "The UNESCO Chair in Humanistic Education. In 1997 he established the Network of Humanist Schools and in the year 2000 formed a coalition of educators to provide decent and equal educational opportunities for the children of migrant workers and asylum seekers in Israel. In 2004 he was awarded "Knight of Quality Government" by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel. In 2005 he received the Municipality of Tel Aviv Education Prize for his contribution to educational research and practice. In 2021 he was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from Teachers College – Columbia University and in 2022 he was awarded the Israel Rotary Ethics Prize for his contribution to the theory and practice of education.

Wiel Veugelers

Wiel Veugelers is emeritus professor of education at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht. His expertise is in moral development, citizenship education and educational change. He is editor of the bookseries Moral Development and Citizenship Education and associate editor of the Journal of Moral Education.

Notes

1 The cultural critique and diagnoses of the global risks to sustainable futures presented in this paper are grounded in a humanist, progressive, and critical worldview and commitment to the enhancement of liberal democracy, social justice, and environmental sustainability. For significant examples of this perspective see: Apple, Biesta, Bright, Giroux, Heffernan, McLaren, Riddle & Yeatman (2022); Narvaez (2020); Aloni and Wientrob, (2017); Anderson (2009); Veugelers (2019), Misiaszek (2019), Kahn (2010), Miseliunaite, B., Kliziene, I., and Cibulskas, G. (2022); Rozzi E al. (2023) as well as in the official educational policies of UNESCO and of progressive nations such as Finland; and the harsh criticism voiced by Greta Thunberg (2021), linking violence and devastation against humans and against nature to the same immoral motives and conduct.

2 It is of course possible to diagnose our cultural illnesses in somewhat different categories, but based on the academic literature (see footnote 1) on public discourse, and our special concerns as educators, it seems to us tenable to talk in the categories of environmental, political, social, health, and cultural (in two specific yet often complementing and conflicting connotations - of high culture or canonical culture as well as diverse cultures and their extinction by neo-liberal systems of capitalist globalization and domination. From a yet different perspective, psychologist Peter Kahn (2018) argues that like the existence of elephants in a zoo, our life in urban, technological, consumerist, and digitized mass culture – alienated from ourselves, fellow humans, nature, and culture – we are becoming like “cattle in a feed lock” – “distant shells of our former and flourishing ancestral selves”.

3 Consider the devastating effect of harsh capitalism and obsessive consumption on the natural environment, the waves of refugees resulting from global warming and drought, and the rise of political extremism and political populism related to attempts of refugees to find safe haven in developed countries. Humanity or human culture might be discussed as a distinct category separated from Nature or mother earth but may equally discussed as an element or part of Nature. In this paper we refer to the categories of humanity or the crisis of humankind and nature or the environmental crisis and acknowledge the interconnectedness between the two. We also adopt the terminology suggested recently by Rozzi: humans and other than humans (2023).

4 See footnote 1. Considering violence against humans and nature, we are focusing on massive or large scale violations – such as authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, racism, and corporate capitalism – that are responsible for mass atrocities, social exclusion, ecocide, and global warming. From different perspectives see discussions of socio-environmental violence by colonization, global capitalism and destruction of the natural world: Greta Thundberg (2021) asserting that the environmental crisis is “tied directly to injustices that date back to colonialism… and the idea that some people are worth more than others”; Shiva on “monocultures of the mind” (1993); and the Ecopedagogy criticism of violence – including by using post-truth frameworks and forms of communication (Peters, 2017, Misiaszek, 2019, and Fassbinder Et al. 2012).

5 Employing here, in a negative sense, Dewey’s definition of education (Democracy and Education, p. 328).

6 On educational programs and school curricula that shift the focus from academic disciplines and subject matter to humanity’s predicaments and challenges see Maxwell (2014); Biesta (2011); Aloni and Weintrob (2017), Kahn (2008), 2010); Fassbinder Et a. (2012); Holfelder (2019); Miseliunaite, B., Kliziene, I., and Cibulskas, G. (2022). On cultivating freedom with regard to alternative futures, personal and political agency, critical outlook, and social imagination in the face of the future see for example Greene (2013) and Holfelder (2019).

7 The concept of Ecohumanism, arising from various sentiments and rationales present in Ecopedagogy, Biocultural Conservation, and Planetary-Social education for Sustainable Futures, has been employed simultaneously by different authors and groups in different parts of the world. It is also a much humbler humanism in the sense that it is less anthropocentric and less Eurocentric: taking into account the flourishing and the sustainability of the natural environment as well as more multicultural and committed to the conservation of diverse cultures and traditions. See for example: Patterson, Ecohumanism: Principles and Practice; “Humanist Society of Scotland; Aloni Et al., Ecohumanism Now So There will be a Tomorrow; Rozzi Et. Al (2023); Kahn, P. (2018); Kahn. R (2010); and the newly published Journal of Ecohumanism.

8 We recognize the reality of conflicting values and interest – for example, between seeking justice and pursuing harmony – but all in all, adopting Kant’s notion of “good will”, Spinoza’s rationalist and naturalist conception of the good life and common good, Buber’s notion of true dialogue, and the more recent philosophical contributions of Habermas, Rawls and Nussbaum regarding justice and discourse – we believe that they form together ways to implement the regulative ideal of Ecohumanism while reaching sound balances between conflicting interests and values. In many current writings on the socio-environmental crisis and on socio-environmental justice we find the employment of seeking peace, harmony, or wellness with oneself, with others, with nature, in dynamic balance. One good example on virtue ethics and the virtue of harmony with nature is found in Jordan, K. and Kristjansson K. (2016) as well as in the article about holistic education by Miseliunaite, B., Kliziene, I., and Cibulskas, G. (2022). A good example of emphasis on socio-environmental and ecological justices, see in Fassbinder Et. Al (2012).

9 A quite similar model of democratic and global citizenship was introduced by Martha Nussbaum, stressing three complementing competencies: Socratic-Critical way of thinking, broad knowledge of cultures, past and presents, and empathetic narrative imagination (Nussbaum, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2010).

10 This social orientation can range from a more social-psychological empathy (Noddings, 2002) till a more political, transformative solidarity, social justice, empowerment and change of power relations (Freire, 1985). See for different articulations of citizenship and democracy also Westheimer & Kahne, 2004; Johnson & Morris, 2010; Sant, 2019).

11 Personal authenticity, just like personal autonomy and individuality, is an essential element in personal agency and builds immunity to herd-mentality. This however, within a conception of holistic liberal and humanistic education, is a virtue that must be balanced – in the well rounded personality and in the education of democratic personality – by a strong civic spirit, empathetic sensitivity, sense of justice, and moral concern for the common good. See for example Aloni’s (2011) theory of humanistic education and Miseliunaitej Et al. (2022) on theory of holistic education.

12 For a recent discussion of this view see Zovko (2013).

13 See for example Peters (2017.) and Misiaszek (2019)