Love and social justice in learning for sustainability

Abstract

The planet seems to be heading into an ecological catastrophe, in which the earth will become uninhabitable for many species, including human beings. At the same time we humans are beset by appalling injustices. The Rio Declaration which addressed both these sets of problems contains conceptual contradictions about ‘development and ‘nature’. This paper addresses the issue of whether it is logically possible to work for both global justice and ecological sustainability. The article (1) proposes a way of responding to the spirit of the Rio Declaration without reinstating its contradictions; (2) considers a posthuman perspective on the issue; and (3) proposes a phenomenological approach to ethics and justice which would include both the human and more-than-human parts of the world. In section (4) the implications for education are drawn out, in terms of ‘learning to mind’. Finally, links are drawn to the Journal theme of translation.

Keywords:

• Learning for sustainability
• posthumanism
• education
• ethics
• social justice
• teaching
• learning

Notes

1. Principle 2 is less relevant to the theme of this article:

States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.

2. Both authors were school teachers and now teach in Higher Education. Morwenna Griffiths has been in teacher education for many years, while Rosa Murray was, until recently, an educational policy maker and is the person who was most closely responsible for introducing Learning for Sustainability (LfS) into the Teaching Standards in Scotland in 2013. They met regularly during the 2015–2016 academic year to discuss the relation between ecological sustainability and social justice. This paper is one result of the collaboration. It was written by Morwenna who uses ‘I’ (Morwenna) as well as ‘we’ (Morwenna and Rosa). But all the arguments have been developed and are owned by both of us.

3. Of course, many non-Westerners also live in the midst of modern technology. On the other hand, much of the world’s population has little access to it. For instance, according to World Bank data, in 2016 only 40% of the world’s people had access to the internet (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2).

4. Learning that each of us is part of a human community means losing self-centredness. However, it does not mean losing the self. This is analogous to losing anthropocentricism. Abandoning the view that humans are the only holders of moral standing does not mean we abandon the moral standing that we have. Further, while acknowledging that the human perspective is only partial, it is the only perspective available to us.

5. We are indebted to our colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, Peter Higgins and Robbie Nicol, for this way of articulating the educational task.

6. We are focusing on the education of human beings in this article. We expect that the inseparability of reason, emotion feeling and logic will apply to other entities in the world, but the investigation of that is beyond the scope of this article.

7. We have avoided using the term ‘nature’, which is notoriously ambiguous, and also liable to invoke a Romantic vision of wilderness and beauty.