What is Sustainable Education?

OEDSI's Model for Sustainable Education Workbook (PDF document 272kb)

Sustainable education is education that provides choices for the future that are sustainable for humans, natural resources and biodiversity. OEDSI provides sustainable education through an interdisciplinary curriculum that integrates applied science, technology, communication and local and global awareness as a platform for students to address issues of sustainability in core subject areas.

~ Education that does not include an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability is not sustainable education.

~ Current standard curricula does not provide skills or awareness about ecological concepts and applied science that can be used to illuminate existing choices that may not be available in the future.

~ If we continue to live lifestyles that deplete our natural resources and biodiversity locally and globally we are no longer sustainable.

Sustainability is the concept that within our biosphere we are interdependent upon living and non-living matter in order to survive. We must only consume natural resources at a rate at which they can be replenished, protect biodiversity of life, and ensure that our current and future generations have clean air, water, food and shelter.

Mrs. Messenger’s 5th grade science class comments on sustainability after a week of our program (September 2004):

“Sustainability means supporting the world.”

“In order to take something you must give it back to nature. To hold up.”

“I learned that sustainability is when you all work together - it helps keep the world up.”

“I learned that sustainability is when you all just work together peacefully - to support.”

“Sustainability means to make sustainable food, milk, water. We could throw out less food, use less water, and throw out less milk. That is what I think we can do.”

To sustain means to hold or bear up from below. The idea is that we depend on diversity of life to hold or bear the weight of humans up, and in turn, we must replenish what we take at a rate that is sustainable for ourselves and future generations. This is achieved through scientific awareness, appropriate technology and interdisciplinary education. Our need for education has grown to one that requires critical thinking skills and innovative approaches to sustainable development that are dynamic in approach and have long-term sustainability goals in mind.

To be sustainable is actually extremely complex because it means that one must take all circuits of an action into consideration, making sure that the impact made has an overall benefit for not only human diversity but more-than-human biodiversity as well. Through sustainable education we can create a dialogue with scientists and experts who are attempting to make holistic non-specialized approaches to systems that function sustainably on a local level, and therefore work towards creating a sustainable global community. The age of “think locally, act globally” has changed in the sense that our immediate local actions most often make a global impact each day. Our children need to be taught the differences of applied local action versus other learning methods in order to determine for themselves creative and crucial ways that they can build sustainable lifestyles. The great news is that there is no one way; it is the choices that need to be illuminated, rather than a homogenous solution that does not exist.

Sustainable education can offer this through creating a real time communication and mentoring program which allows students to gather information about the world and bring it into local projects that are within their means. Part of sustainable education is to recognize the need for applied sciences and interdisciplinary approaches to education. While we recognize the need for expertise in fields of study, we also recognize the benefit of having a broader picture of how that field affects surrounding discipline areas, policies, cultures and lifestyles. Sustainable education is about preparing our children to lead humans towards paths that the rest of nature can bear up from below rather than breaking underneath our footsteps.

Workshops and Lectures
It is important to not only educate our children on sustainability, but current educators and decision makers in business, development, science, technology, policy and international trade. OEDSI is now available to provide workshops and lectures for teachers, universities and businesses interested in integrating sustainable approaches into their environments. For more information on lectures and workshops please contact us at info@oedsi.org.

Suggested links

There is a lot of material on sustainability, education and sustainable development. Below are some links and references to look at. If you would like more information or a suggestion on books to read please email us at info@oedsi.org

www.esdtoolkit.org
www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/vshiva4_int.html#Anchor-The-55217
www.ecoliteracy.org
www.johannesburgsummit.org/html/basic_info/basicinfo.html