when looking at sustainability in schools and the impact it has locally and globally. When looking at the challenges and opportunities for sustainability education I am filled with both great fear and great hope. It is very difficult to question the need for a change of this nature in our world, yet schools have not yet caught up to the change required to act upon it. We are wasting our brains and our only world on the design, production, and consumption of things we do not need and that are not serving us well. (Chouinard & Stanley, 2012). This is the creative tension that drives me forward to help create better learning and a better future for students everywhere through K-12 schools.
David Orr (1994) shares that the destruction of the planet is not the work of ignorant people, but rather of those with many degrees and years of formal education. Where do sustainability and formal education meet? And where do they work against each other driving the human condition deeper into massive complex issues endangering the planet, our societies, our economic models and our wellbeing? Perhaps never before has the need for a different approach to K-12 education been more important or timely.
The deeper I dig into learning about systems the more I wonder why I never had the opportunity to do so much earlier in life. My own understanding of the connected nature of all things on earth has developed over time. Some of this learning emerged intuitively, but most has come from a deep dive in the last few years into systems and sustainability. No one was “teaching me” to learn this; I was passionate about creating a sustainable future through education and have come to learn that this would not be possible without a systemic approach. Systems learning can inform the setup of the formal education system and improve the learning that takes place within that system. It makes me regret not having been exposed to any deliberate systems literacy earlier in life. It is the drive to offer these learning opportunities for young people in education that I believe will bring about large-scale change towards some of the biggest and most complex issues facing humankind today.
This transformation from linear to systemic thinking will not only improve learning in schools but also create a more sustainable future. Senge (2014) shared that he believes schools are not meeting the mark when it comes to addressing and tackling the world’s most complex issues. The linear makeup of formal education creates walls rather than breaking them down for more connected learning and better solutions. He believes that no one wakes up in the morning and wants to effect climate change in a negative way, we simply lack the connected thinking and tools to understand and take meaningful action on a micro and macro level.
There is much conversation globally around the terminology that surrounds systems. Whether it is called systems dynamics, systems thinking, systems literacy or systems science there seems to be no uniform and globally understood approach. It is no wonder schools have difficulty with conflicting understandings and vocabularies for what fundamentally is a very similar understanding about the connected nature of all things, and thinking about the world in a different way. Many organizations and tools exist in support of kindergarten to Grade twelve schools (K-12) in achieving a more connected systemic approach, but many barriers also persist which is blocking progress. Bateson (1997) states that “our machines, our value systems, our educational systems will all have to be informed by (the) switch, from the machine age when we tried to design schools to be like factories” to something more appropriat
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