Caribbean dreams: Education for more than just sustainable development

Abstract

Education has the potential to help address some of the most critical social and environmental issues of the Caribbean. However, I argue that this can only occur if there is a radical critique of the now dominant education for sustainable development (ESD) discourse, which is seemingly constructed primarily from the positionality and interests of the global powerful. I draw on repositioning theory to reframe the perspective from which the sustainability discourse is constructed to advocate for an educational approach that is more relevant to the context of the Caribbean. The resulting education envisioned in this paper, Education for Social Transformation (EST), challenges some of the assumptions and conceptions of ESD by exposing broader issues of inequity that the latter concept implicitly endorses. I argue that EST may help build sustainable Caribbean societies by linking environmental preservation to broader social transformations. Thus, transformation takes center stage in place of the limited notion of sustainability that has become synonymous with capitalist development violence.

Keywords:

• CARICOM Caribbean
• education for social transformation
• education for sustainable development
• small island developing states
• sustainable development

Notes

1 The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is a grouping of twenty countries: fifteen Member States and five Associate Members. CARICOM Member States: Antigua & Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Republic of Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago. CARICOM Associate Members: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Island, Cayman Islands, and Turks and Caicos Islands.