project countries, have certain things in common, that is,“ schools are to stimulate the creative curiosity of pupils and help increase self-confidence and willingness to try out their own ideas. Pupils should also be given opportunity to use their knowledge to reflect, critically examine, analyse and solve problems. Pupils should be able to take initiative and responsibility thereby developing their ability to work both independently as well as in collaboration with others”.
But then how do we, educational professionals, make the children of today not only accomplish all this but also help them in becoming active citizens?
Church and Skelton, in their publication, Sustainability Education in K-12 Classrooms, claims that, the concept of sustainability can provide a wonderful context for developing the skills of critical thinking, systems thinking, collaboration, and communication. In their report, they quoted a teacher who had incorporated sustainability lessons into his classroom:
“ The nature of lessons on sustainability requires that students apply critical thinking skills and that they draw from their own experiences and world knowledge. The interactive characteristic of the activities invites the participation of all students.” They also believe that“ readings and activities that enable students to grapple with reallife, real-world issues and combine them with opportunities for reflection and syntheses make learning authentic”.
According to Education for Sustainable Development Toolkit, 2002, ESD helps develop the ability to separate number, quantity, quality, and value. 9 UNESCO affirms that it promotes participatory learning and higherorder thinking skills. It also promotes lifelong learning and helps build civil capacity for community-based decision-making, social tolerance, environmental stewardship and provides good quality of life. 10 Since education for sustainability is future oriented, it prepares the learners for their world and their future.
Another reason why, schools play an important role in the education for sustainable development is because if we have to create the future we want and need, we should be able to envision what is not yet formed and dare to dream beyond our current reality. 11 As we all know, children by nature possess abundance of creative ideas waiting to be acknowledged by adults. Sir Ken Robinson in his speech on“ Do schools kill creativity?”, spoke about the innovative capacity of all children and how we adults pretty ruthlessly squander them. 12 If we can manage to encourage children to develop their creativity and natural visions to co-create sustainable outcomes and solutions, our job as educators, will become fairly easy and enjoyable. This will also give us the innate capacity to reach every child placed in our care. In the words of the social science teacher, who noted how a lesson on depletion of natural resources in the social science lesson helped engage all of her students:
“ The hands-on activities brought in another dimension of learning and brought my tougherto-reach kids into the lesson.”( Church and Skelton)
9 www. esdtoolkit. org
10 http:// www. unesco. org / new / en / education / themes / leading-the-international-agenda / education-for-sustainabledevelopment / education-for-sustainable-development /( assessed 4 th of January, 2016)
11 http:// educationforsustainability. info / learn / creativity-visioning /( assessed 5 th of January, 2016) 12 https:// www. youtube. com / watch? v = iG9CE55wbtY( viewed 30 th of December, 2015)
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