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Abstract
The article compares how the UN-initiated education for sustainable development (ESD) has fared in three seemingly dissimilar countries: Norway, a wealthy, ‘post-materialist’ liberal democracy, Ghana, a developing democratic country, and China, a fast catching-up, centrally- steered economy. The study – based on an analysis of national ESD programmes, schoolbooks and qualitative interviews with teachers and students – discusses some of the pivotal reasons for the decline in ESD schooling in all three countries. It also explores surprising ‘archipelagos of pedagogical innovation’, as shown by one of the high schools in Ghana. Our conclusions are that, apart from specific, cultural and political contexts which influence ESD, students’ socio-environmental literacy in the examined countries has been affected by an ever more pervasive competitive and neoliberal mindset. Further, in all three cases, the agenda of ‘sustainable development’ suffers from a ‘narrative and mythical deficit’: a lack of a mobilizing story, the absence of which reduces the attractiveness of sustainability ideals and inhibits their empowering potential.
Notes
1. UNCED’s ambition of creating an interdisciplinary field of education has been clearly stated: ‘To be effective, environment and development education should deal with the dynamics of both the physical/biological and socio-economic environment and human (which may include spiritual) development, should be integrated in all disciplines, and should employ formal and non-formal methods and effective means of communication’ (UNCED Citation1992, 33).
2. This article draws on data collected by master students Kari Laumann and Ellie Ribeiro Koelch, and research assistants Emma Holm, Abdulai Jakalia, and Su Dongxia (see references).
3. The UNDP assessment, focused on health, equality and social justice, access to knowledge, and high standard of living, highlights quality of life and downplays gross national product, though Norway scores high in the latter category as well. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
4. As late as March 2016, the Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg insisted that despite the oil crisis, the Norwegian ‘oil adventure is not finished; it will continue in many decades’. She defined the way forward in terms of technology and job-transformation. https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/statsminister-erna-solberg-apnet-norsk-olje-og-gass-sin-arskonferanse/id2479156/.
5. These comments and definitions were offered by some twelve Norwegian high school graduates at the first seminar at the Centre for Development and the Environment, the University of Oslo in the autumn of 2014.
6. One of them is the annual Oslo ‘Business for Peace’ award given annually to ‘businessworthy’, sustainable and peace-forging economic innovations across the world. See http://businessforpeace.no/
7. Du (Citation2008). A decade review on ESD in China. Journal on Education for Sustainable Development in China, 1, 1, 2.
8. There are three more references to ESD in the Outline, but none elaborates on the subject.
9. Beijing’s Jingshan School has 2400 students in total, and includes primary, junior and high school levels.
10. We updated our findings at the end of 2015 by having a skype conference with our collaborators and a teacher informant.
11. The workshop was followed by subsequent teacher training program at the Institute of Management, Planning, and Administration in Accra. http://www.ibe.unesco.org/International/ICE47/English/Natreps/reports/ghana.pdf, 26.
15. Theoretically, this vicious circle should have ended in 2014, when oil prices plummeted and solar energy became significantly cheaper. But at the ‘touching ground’ conference with one of our Ghanaian collaborators at the end of 2015, we were told that Ghana showed few signs of improvement in terms of green transition.
16. Many pupils alluded to a fund-raising funfair they had organized at a newly constructed school in the poor Volta Region.
17. A similar conclusion has been drawn in a 2015 study reviewing the environmental education in China (Tian and Wang Citation2015). The authors criticise ‘the unscientific understanding on environmental education, low-level of motivation to incorporate EE in teachings, the lack of environmental awareness, and contradiction between economic growth and environmental protection and sustainable development’.
18. Glimpses of such balance could be seen at the Tema school in Ghana. Norway has a long tradition of schooling in ‘pro-sociality’, but, as I have argued, both teachers and students are increasingly pressed to preach and practice a competitive ethos.
19. A similar claim about China has been made by James Miller in the article ‘Is Green the New Red? The Role of Religion in Creating a Sustainable China.’ In Religious Innovation for a Sustainable Future: Perspectives from Norway, Ghana, China, and India, ed. Nina Witoszek, Journal of Nature and Culture, Vol. 8, Citation2013.