Sustainability and Improvement: A problem ‘of’ Education and ‘for’ Education

In this short discussion paper I will develop some earlier writing on the theme of education, improvement and sustainability (see refs). It builds upon my primary criticism of the school improvement movement that it is accustomed to thinking of education as good in and of itself. As David Orr suggests candidly in his essay in the early 1990’s, ‘It is not education that will save us, but education of a certain kind (Orr 1991)’ my assertion is that the type of education that is being advanced through the school improvement movement is simply not the kind that we need to tackle some of the most pressing challenges we now face in the form of environmental change and the looking presence of a post-oil economy (Stern 2006).

A problem ‘of’ educational improvement
It is fair to say that amongst most people, education is generally thought of as a good thing. Indeed, it is thought of as such a good thing by many people that they willingly send their young children to participate in it for the majority of their childhood. In turn, governments commit vast amounts of money each year to support and develop the education system offering a diverse curriculum to ensure that we have ‘a talented and vibrant workforce’ (Ed Balls – Secretary of State for Education). This commitment to education as a good thing in itself is not a recent feature of industrialized nations, as Ivan Illich (1974) reminds us:

‘John Amos Comenius, a Moravian bishop of the seventeenth century, a self-styled pansophist and pedagogue, is rightly considered one of the founders of the modern school. He was among the first to propose seven or twelve grades of compulsory learning. In his Magna Didactica he described schools as devices to “teach everybody everything” and outlined a blueprint for the assembly-line production of knowledge, which according to his method would make education cheaper and better and make growth into full humanity possible for all.’

Comenius was also an alchemist who adapted the language of his craft to the pursuit of rearing children. Through a succession of twelve refinements the alchemist sought enlightenment in the pursuit of creating gold. Needless to say the process failed, but each time it failed the alchemists presented new reasons for the failure and they tried again.

Education has become a form of modern alchemy. It promises to bring forth citizens who will be fit for the receiving environment created by the magic of modern educational science. With successive years of compulsory schooling, students are expected to progress to a point where they will be deemed successfully educated and ready to participate in the wider world. Yet despite successive waves of initiatives and improvement efforts, the industrial mode of education continues to fail many of these people. Instead of asking the question of the science, we continue to propose new ways to work the alchemy, our latest is in the form of the National Challenge (DCFS 2008 ), (previously the London Challenge, The Manchester Challenge and the Black Country Challenge). As a result, education, and more particularly educational improvement has become institutionalized. And as it is a necessity for students to have qualifications in order to participate in our society; we consider schooling as an ‘entitlement.’ Such a view compounds the poverty of those who are unschooled, at home and abroad, and maintains a gulf between developed and developing nations, cultures and communities – a defining feature to distinguish between those who practice education in a manner that we recognize, against those who do not (Reimer 1971). If we accept the authority of an institution to define how educated we are, we accept someone else’s measure of ourselves. When we collude with the institution in this way, we define ourselves through its definition of success, and we commit to adhere to its way of operating thus ensuring that it remains necessary and that the institution continues to flourish.

My suggestion is simple. Alternatives to the current alchemy of education do exist, but it is very difficult to present these different ideas of what education might be, within the existing measures of the school improvement and school effectiveness movement, primarily because the movement is locked into the institutional view that school, and therefore schooled education, is the only game in town. I make these claims as someone who has been a part of this movement for a good many years, and it is in recognition of the limitations of my own arguments for learning communities, that I felt the need to begin to explore further into the possibility of a different discourse and practice of education and thus we need to proffer a different concept of improvement.

A problem ‘for’ educational improvement
In his most recent book the eminent scientist James Lovelock (2006) points out, that as nations and individuals we are currently trapped in a vicious circle of positive feedback where our preoccupation of self impedes our vision of our wider effect.

‘What happens in one place very soon affects what happens in others. We are dangerously ignorant of our own ignorance, and rarely see things as a whole’ (Lovelock 2006).

Whereas my earlier ideas proposed the notion of a learning school functioning as a network in a deliberate, orchestrated strategy for improving the quality of educational provision, I now recognise that this in itself is severely limited. Over a decade of work in the field in the pursuit of creating Learning Communities has taught me that a commitment to interconnectedness, and a willingness to develop strategic understanding of the consequences of interconnectedness take us much further into the interplay between individual and group, between one living community and another and as such, it has caused me to have to rethink the place of education within a much wider sphere of human encounters and activities. To so anything less, is simply to magnify the already intolerable level of failure that exists in the system.

Whereas much of the school improvement movement’s earlier work was concerned with reform, I now think we have to focus completely upon transformation, further reform is not enough. A decade ago, I was not alone in thinking that a coherent argument in favour of sustainable development would be sufficient to galvanise a range of opinion and practice and create a vibrant and innovative way of responding to change. I now think that we have to be advocates for transformation, as sustainable development has simply created the pathway for maintenance of the status quo. Transformation means seeing the problem through a completely different set of lenses, the reformists lens no longer provides enough interconnection to enable the challenge of sustainability to be appreciated.

A decade ago I was concerned, as many were, with sustainable development - a reform of existing policy. Now I think we are in a race for survival and sustainable retreat is our preferred route, our transformational journey.

The term ‘sustainable’ is becoming more a part of the new school improvement lexicon. But it is frequently cited in connection with the maintenance of existing practice, and is locked to the notion of development (DCSF 2008). Sustainable development is fashionable as it makes reassuring noises and fits the old world order that still believes in the main that global warming is fixable, and favours business as usual with a trust in technology as the solution to the current problems we face. But as Lovelock comments, sustainable development puts us in the comfort zone of pretending we are making real change when in fact we are deluding ourselves, and colluding with existing arrangements;

‘Sustainable development is a moving target. It represents the continuous effort to balance and integrate three pillars of social well-being, economic prosperity and environmental protection for the benefit of present and future generations. Many consider this noble policy morally superior to the laissez-faire of business as usual. Unfortunately for us, these wholly different approaches, one the expression of international decency, the other of unfeeling market forces, have the same outcome: the probability of disastrous global change. The error they share is the belief that further development is possible and that the Earth will continue, more or less as now, for at least the first half of this century. Two hundred years ago, when change was slow or non-existent, we might have had time to establish sustainable development, or even have continued for a while with business as usual, but now is much too late, the damage has already been done. (Lovelock 2006, p3/4).

Lovelock’s argument is that it is much too late for sustainable development, he makes a compelling case for what he calls sustainable retreat (p8). In his critique of science as a ‘cosy, friendly club of specialists who follow their numerous different stars, he observes that they are ‘wonderfully productive but never certain and always hampered by the persistence of incomplete world views’. We might usefully draw the analogy across every sector, and particularly shine it upon current educational policy, be it focused on sustainable development or simply upon the future. It is much too late for educational ‘reform’ under its current guise as it is wedded to the view that we create citizens in the form of participants in the knowledge economy, worldly consumers, reliant upon economic development and progress. It is an institutionalized version of the old order. This, the old order, has crumbled, we prop up schools as if there is no alternative, yet we fail to see that the damage is already done, we need to transform the whole notion of education for a clear need, survival.

If we think of education for survival - for sustainable retreat we can explore it on personal and societal terms. How we relate to our planet, and how we begin to construct a new transformative discourse and practice of change. In what Joanna Macy calls ‘The Great Turning,’ she describes the essential adventure for our time - a shift from the ‘Industrial Growth Society’ to a ‘Life-sustaining civilization.’ It is a re-evaluation of how we live together on a grand scale, and as such it is a fine place from which to begin to consider the problem for the new role of education. She continues, ‘People are recognising that our needs cannot be met without destroying our world, We have the technical knowledge, the communication tools, and material resources to grow enough food, ensure clean air and water, and meet rational energy needs. Future generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the epochal transition we are making to a life-sustaining society. And they may well call this the time of the Great Turning. It is happening now.'

She continues...'Whether or not it is recognized by corporate-controlled media, the Great Turning is a reality. Although we cannot know yet if it will take hold in time for humans and other complex life forms to survive, we can know that it is under way. And it is gaining momentum, through the actions of countless individuals and groups around the world. To see this as the larger context of our lives clears our vision and summons our courage.’

My primary observation is that I got learning communities badly wrong. I thought a decade ago, that the general development of the learning community concept, and its integration in the education system as a progressive vehicle would enhance the likelihood of other, closely connected concepts and issues and facilitate a radical redesign at a systemic level.

Despite many valiant efforts (for example the NCSL Networked Communities Programme, and our own IQEA networks), it is clear that the enterprise of learning community development on its own is fundamentally flawed, not least, in the notion that a community simply focused on learning is in any way equipped to develop appropriate responses to a changing environment. There are many reasons, but one central failure of the learning community development has been the nature of institutionalized learning - what is learnt is too often taken as given rather than being held up to careful critical scrutiny.

I propose that the problem for school improvement, is to position itself for something radically different, a concept I have begun to call a sustainable living community – not a school, not primarily focused on the intention or need of the school, but something deeper and wider that serves its community with an ethic of all education is environmental education from the outset. It is more deeply embedded in responding to cultural, social, ecological, economic and spiritual need: it is concerned with connection to local food, local work, local innovation and re-engagement with earth, interconnected networks of similar communities, communities looking at new forms of building for sustainable living and of course, exploring how we educate all members of the community to begin to participate in what Peter Senge (2006) calls ‘metanoia’ - a shift of mind and practice in response to a changed environment.

I think that the challenge is to reclaim education from centralised, predetermined packages of learning - to take education from those who see it as a servant of industry and therefore model it around industrially established measures and parameters and to embed it in ecology. Humans need to learn that they are related to all other life, and that our future depends upon the well-being of the planet. Stephen Sterling (2001) calls this alternative 'authentic education', a form of education rooted in tradition, in meaningful contexts and in the pursuit of community. It is open, participatory, engaging, passionate, it challenges convention, it is spontaneous and reflective. This challenge is what Thomas Berry calls 'the great work' which involves us in remaking the human presence on earth and how we 'provision ourselves with food, energy, materials, water, livelihood, health and shelter' (Angyal 2003). The pursuit of sustainability comes through both ecological renewal and spiritual reconnection with self, others and environment. It is time for this change, it is time for this challenge to be taken up by educators, and for education. This is what improvement when used in relation to educational practice, should now mean.

References
Angyal, A. (2003) Thomas Berry’s Earth Spirituality and the Great Work. Ecozoic Reader, 3,3,35-44
Clarke, P. (2000) Learning Schools, Learning Systems. London. Continuum
Clarke, P. (2008) Education and Sustainability. Professional Development Today.
Illich, I. (1975) Tools for Conviviality. London. Fontana
Lovelock, J. (2006) London. Penguin
Macy, J., and Young Brown, M. (1998) Coming Back to Life. New York. New Society Publishers.
Reimer, E. (1971) School is Dead. An essay on alternatives in education, Harmondsworth: Penguin
Senge, P. (2006) Learing for Sustainability. Boston MIT. SOL
HM Treasury (2006) Stern review: The economics of climate change. available at: www.hm-treasury. gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_
economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm
Orr, D. (2004) Earth in Mind. Washington. Island Press

Sterling, S. (2006) Education for Sustainability. London. Earthscan
Sustainable Development Commission. (2007) Every Child’s Future Matters. HMSO
The local government white paper (2006) Strong and prosperous communities – the Department of Communities and Local Government

Wrigley. T (2005) Another school is possible: Learning from Europe. FORUM, Volume 47, Number 2 & 3, 2005