Action Verbs: Educating for a Sustainable Future

I just enjoyed Chapter 10 in Heidi Hayes Jacobs' book, Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World. The chapter was written by Jamie P. Cloud and dealt with the idea that our world and the way we are living now is unsustainable. According to the author, "A practice (or a set of practices) is unsustainable when it undermines the health of the very systems upon which it depends and therefore cannot be continued or sustained over time (p. 168)"

Thinking about sustainability in terms of education is an interesting concept to me. I knew that we were doing our students a disservice by teaching them in the same old way we always have, but I hadn't thought about how it is effecting the world as a whole. Our current students are going to have to deal with a planet that is sick from misuse and abuse and they are going to be the ones to have to come up with solutions. The way we are educating them now is not giving them the practice and the skills to be able to rise to this task. According to the chapter, 70% of students feel hopeless about the future and "disempowered" in their lives. My answer to this is, we need to provide them with choices and opportunities to get that power and hope back!

The Cloud Institute for Sustainable Education is a program that inspires educators to teach meaningful content to create a sustainable future. On page 181, the author makes several statements about what students will do in a service learning project following their program. The statements all started with an action verb: develop, explore, discover, investigate, envision, document, research, and scan. What powerful words!

Up until now it is almost like we have had our heads in the sand. We keep telling kids that since they are our future, they will have to help us fix the mess our planet and its inhabitants are in, but we never give them the skills or opportunities to do so. We need to take action and tap into our resource of the young!