Promoting information literacy in European classrooms - teaching the Google-generation – challenges for teachers and teacher educators
Perstalozzi Programme: Council of Europe
Bergen, Norway
14/09/2010 – 17/09/2010
Author details:
Professor Paul Clarke,
St Mary's University College,
London, England
contact: paul.g.clarke@camb-ed.com
Paper title: Tiny worlds and big realities: Creating sustainable communities in the google-age
Unless we live our lives with at least some cosmological awareness, we risk collapsing into tiny worlds. For we can be fooled into thinking that our lives are passed on political entities, such as the state or a nation, or that the bottom line concerns in life have to do with economic realities of consumer life styles. In truth, we live in the midst of immensities, and we are intrically woven into an immense cosmic drama. (Swimme 1996:60)
Synopsis
3.3 billion people live in urban environments, by 2030 this is estimated to increase to 5 billion[1]. The dominant narrative of the modern world that forms many of the economic, cultural and environmental conditions that operate in these urban spaces has emerged from the industrial era. Industrialisation has shaped our economies, our societies and our cultures, and its language of improvement and effectiveness largely determine how we think and act. Whether we live in urban or rural settings, our worldview if we live in ‘western’ society is likely to be defined by consumerism. The idea of the late industrial age being one of enhanced efficiency which leads to greater economic wealth, with smarter design and smarter technologies within smarter cities which arise out of an ever more skilled, and informed knowledgeable workforce. It is this very same, smarter than ever workforce that presides over an unprecedented collapse in our global ecosystem and widespread dysfunction that is occurring in our existing human systems of education, health, politics, economics, and agriculture. The combination of recurring social, economic and civic problems suggests that the way we relate to our world is out of alignment with our environment, our solutions are dated, destructive and unsustainable, too they are both predictable and too short-term. Our progress through this century will be in no small part measured by whether we are capable of creating sustainable communities, our route to this goal will be through new connections, local to global, that transcend earlier ideas and formulations of human life on this planet.
Introduction
As education systems around the world strive for continual improvement, we are beginning to recognise the immense possibilities of the technology of the internet as a way of connecting people through images, ideas and interests. It is a fascinating consequence of the increasing level of standardization of communication platforms and processes, for example, that human beings experience a greater variety of voices and encounter more ideas than at any time in human history[2] (Lloyds 2010:10).
Whilst the internet technologies allow us to see our world as ‘connected’[3], it is possible to extend this idea of the network from the technical to the cognitive and begin to use the connection as a way in which we see the planet differently, not as separated units defined by nation states and continents, but as a single multi-formed unity, or what James Lovelock (1979) called Gaia[4]. Lovelock’s theory emphasises that we are planetary creatures, our place is within and among the cosmos, not simply locked to a single planet, but intergrated into a dynamic set of relationships which form part of the universal, an emergent and unfolding story of time. As such, it seems appropriate that we consider the implications of this huge new arena for learning in our education systems, to illuminate and enlighten our young people to the reality of this planetary consciousness, and how integrated and interdependent our life systems are on a universal platform with all other planetary life forms and the ecosystems upon which we depend to survive.
The symbolism of the google age, the broad theme of my talk today, is therefore of profound importance. The internet illustrates the power of now, with all of our systems and trading links that weave across the planet we have never before had anything quite as extensive or connected as this system. What was once science fiction is now science fact[5]. Simultaneously, it points us towards one of the great problems of now, that alongside all of these connections, are the consequences. The power of being able to connect almost across the entire planet is an immense opportunity for humankind, it has enabled many amazing things to be developed that provide benefit for people’s lives and well being. However, the power of the now also perhaps inhibits our ability to see the devastating effects of what our contemporary lifestyles are doing to the ecosystems around us. Because the consequences aren’t always on our doorstep, we do not realize the damage that the consumer culture is having to our planet. Whilst the google age enables us to witness many things from many places, it also levels everything to a single platform as a spectator rather than actor. The comic video, the fabulous 100 metre world record, the poverty stricken slum and the oil drenched seagull are all visible, and are all rendered just the same.
What interests me is the possibility of stepping beyond that immediate imagery and connection and engaging concretely with action. Is it, for example, possible to use the resource of these systems to transcend the moment and begin to connect to the broader reality of planetary consciousness. The evidence suggests that it is so. Recent political activities in Iran and in parts of Eastern Europe demonstrated that the connection through the internet and associated technologies could galvanise people around themes for social action. This is interesting when we consider the immensity of the ecological challenge we all face. The google age offers us a glimpse at the presence of the now, through the myriad of links and connections and at the same time it can symbolise, through these links, the possibility of the future, not informed by globalisation and economic consciousness, but by planetary consciousness. The distinction between global and planet is very important, as one is temporal and localised, the other is infinite and transcendant.
The narratives of change: Education, community and the pitfalls of claims of learning to live sustainably
In educational terms, these big cosmological themes can be reduced to a basic question - what are we educating people for? It is a deceptively simple question I have become interested in asking of educators, policy makers and parents. It is clear from the responses I have gathered that we are living in an extraordinary period of human history, with little consensus other than we are educating young people to be able to cope with change, comparable perhaps to the transition from the medieval to the modern. People are conscious of change, and of the major themes of our time such as climate change, environmental change and population change, but they often report that they feel that there is very little they can personally do in response[6].
As our communities mutate into post-modern environments it is as if our schooling systems have managed to do just that, to school our people, but not to educate them and equip them with the tools of self reliance that they might usefully draw upon to fashion a new direction from that which they are conscious is perhaps unsustainable. Our educative process must be sufficiently visionary and transformative, it will have to get beyond the conventional order that education has promoted over the last century or more or we will simply repeat the past mistakes, perpetuating ‘intergenerational tyranny’ (Braungart & McDonough 2002). Our educational needs are for lateral, divergent thinkers, yet the prevailing methodologies of our education systems still continue to pursue divergent, educational programmes which fracture and fragment knowledge into discrete disciplines, instead of encouraging holistic and interconnected solutions. This is not to say that education is not important, but it is to suggest however, that it is education of a particular kind, focused around sustainable living, that we might need to turn our attention towards if we are to overcome some of the challenges we are likely to face in the coming decades. But in defining those particularities we have to be aware that there are multiple dimensions to consider, the google metaphor helps us here, as Edmund O’Sullivan (1999:182) reminds us, there is a great danger in proposing any grand narrative of the future in too deterministic a manner, as it runs the risk of oppressing and colonising the subtle nuances that we discover in cultural differences and will miss the likelihood of unexpected consequences. Indeed, any new large vision, such as the one I am hinting at in the remainder of this paper, have to be framed very carefully and with consideration of the very obvious challenge that can be laid in front of them that they fail to recognise the dynamic in preference of the simplistic, and that they present illusory and imaginary worlds that in the end disempower rather than empower their habitants.
So to begin my argument I want to make the point that the efforts to understand, construct and develop a form of community action that is in some way ‘sustainable’ are at a very early stage in most westernised communities. We do not claim to be pursuing something universal, although there are some very interesting example of the connections between different communities engaged in such work in very different parts of the planet. Nor do we claim to be comprehensive in our knowledge or actions, we understand implicitly that this work is continuous, unfolding and unpredictable. Indeed, these observations demonstrate the very problems we face as we try to describe and re-present our work. We think that what our work illustrates is a response to the grand narrative of global market economies, but we find ourselves at times drawn back into the narratives of these environments because of the pressure to ‘make a living‘, to account for our actions, and to enable others to connect to the meaning of the work.
Our work is undertaken with a view to illustrate that this is not the only story that can be told about how to live in human communities, and that people are capable of presenting counter arguments and practices to those of the dominant market and consumerist model of society. It is easy to see the fragile nature of this approach. Whereas the grand economic narrative dismisses most challenging alternatives as naive, demonstrating at once the predicament of the alternative, and the ease that the power of the dominant story has to push aside critical perspectives, our work has to report on the same platform, measured by others using the same criteria which we seek to challenge. We have to continually attempt to illustrate that our work in growing any form of sustainable community can improve upon the fabric of a community which we have inherited. As a result, we recognise that we undertake our work in the full awareness that our stories are not fully formed, they are often conflicting, messy and muddled, but they also can offer moments of insight and clarity which reveal for people a way of thinking that they can connect with and take into their own settings.
What we have begun to realise however, is that we are not alone. The power of the google age has opened up a global network of people working and living in communities which are exploring very similar themes and ideas with their own contextual variables. As we seek to map some of the terrain of meaning and response to the environmental challenges we face in so many of our urban and rural habitats, we are learning from these projects, their cognitive effort is allied to our own through the posting of stories and images on the net. This both reassures and inspires, it challenges us to look again at our own activity and refine and clarify our argument so that we can pass it back into cyberspace. Whilst what we speak of is personal and bioregional, we recognise that it must describe our locality but also connect to the wider sphere. The connection is practical, not necessarily conceptual, we don’t assume collective thinking, we simply use the resource of the internet to post, and thereby put our piece into the wider circle of ideas. This is one of the transcendent properties of the google age, our work becomes both local and global because it illustrates effort to influence and change, but from very practical positions where the personal and the bioregional starting points. It connects global to local through community action, the connecting thread is people, the technology provides some interesting metaphors for us to examine in our own settings.
A case in point - Incredible Edible
Through our work we are discovering that there are many communities, both marginalized and mainstream, who are reinventing themselves on their own terms to respond to climate, environment, resource and population change. Out of necessity, they are learning to be self-reliant through their need to focus on the basic infrastructure for life. This survival imperative coincidentally enables those same places to be demonstrator sites for what might be called sustainable living, often right in the middle of urban environments[7]. They have to do this because the basic necessities of life; food, clean water, reliable energy are each in their own way proving to be difficult for such communities, either through lack of work to provide a source of income to purchase such goods, or through basic availability or cost.
What does exist as the common ground of the many projects happening in urban settings across the planet is a desire to redesign their community narrative and to reclaim community, as a social, cultural and economic foundation for living. It demonstrates a broader undercurrent of social activity, which is recognising the limits of the individualised, selfish capitalist model and preferring to develop the connections which can begin to grow community, interdependence and supportive networks. This is not action that is simply focused upon the creation of capital wealth, instead, it is a broader definition of wealth that recognises that for communities to flourish, they have to nurture some fundamental qualities within the local infrastructure (NEF 2009). These qualities become real in the actions of the people in the community. They might for example, focus on ideas about work, education, relationships, and place (Clarke 2010), whatever configuration that emerges they form an asset base, a set of connections which extend through a community in the form of a diverse and dynamic network, the more detailed and the more connections, the greater resilience the community demonstrates in times of change.
Some of these ideas serve to inform and motivate people involved in the Incredible Edible project in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. The intention behind the programme was to enable people in the community to create together a different urban landscape where food was a critical component. The idea being that the town would demonstrate growing food can occur anywhere, and as a result, the culture of food growing would be urbanised, established as a common feature of the place, a normal, natural part of the landscape of living. Community food that is grown around the town is free, the idea is itself effectively ‘open source technology’, no-one owns the project, instead it is established on behalf of the community and inherent in its operation is an expectation for people to participate, bring their own ideas to the project and pursue them with others to achieve their goals, adding value to the project as it goes along.
There are a set of simple lessons we have learnt from this project over the last four years which I will rehearse here by way of illustration. I will then conclude this paper by reflecting on the possibilities of the next steps such work might take, and some questions these observations generate.
Finding a clear focus: our project has a focus on food, drawing together three different but complementary concerns, community, business and learning. In each case there are ways of connecting their activity to food, but we have discovered that the more there is convergence between the three elements, the greatwer the capacity for innovation, engagement and substantive change to occur.
Engage everyone: we have a saying in the project - ‘if you eat you are in’. It captures the simplicity of inclusion, everyone can participate, simply because they are consumers of food.
Thinking forwards: we are interested in the development of assets for the community which are long term, this means in some cases the transference of assets into a community accountable body such as a charity which holds on behalf of people in the town the asset base of resources which are required to ensure that local people can engage in the project - in our case this is specifically focused on land banking, identification and support of community growing spaces which can be used for public growing of food.
Encourage the conditions that generate diverse and complementary actions: whilst food is our primary focus of attention, there are a range of different activities which are required to combine and provide an infrastructure for a sustainable programme of community living. These include knowledge about growing, thought about transportation and frugal travel, water harvesting, passive solar energy, ensuring soil fertility, working with animals, ensuring self-reliant power structures, ensuring participation and access.
Identify group space: ensuring that the project enables and opens up possibilities for people to come with ideas and be able to be supported in their efforts to realise their aims in keeping with the broader goals of the project.
Finding the landspace: in our context, land is a precious and limited resource. Planting food in public land space challenges people to reconsider the whole idea of the built environment and ways in which growing can occur within settings which would normally be thought of as unproductive and ill suited to food production. In challenging the convention of growing spaces, we begin to see small scale solutions for food production which in time might translate to bigger practices.
Build on community memory: it is clear that the conversation of food production, growing and community agriculture is one which has happened over many centuries. However, recent generations have fallen out of favour with the experience and the idea of growing food as a necessity. We deliberately seek out the experiences of the older members of the community, many of whom have a direct and personal relationship with food growing, and who are able to provide both illustrative stories of the past local food history, and are able to inform us of the most suitable plants and trees to plant in our region.
Change the idea of local food production: the consumer society has generated a dependency for the supply of food from a small number of major producers. This has resulted in food being taken out of the public consciousness and instead being created as a commodity. The distance people have from their food sources are considerable, even global. While we recognise that there will always be food trade, it is sensible to examine ways in which the localisation of many foods can be reintroduced to reduce carbon emissions and ensure local work, better use of land, and enhance the quality of life within vulnerable communities. In our case we have deliberately begun to introduce food growing into school settings, we are building a hydroponic fish farm on the high school site, we are ensuring that there are growing spaces for community food production on the site to integrate the community life into the school community. We are doing the same thing on the site of the local health centre through an apothecaries garden. This raises public awareness of the potential for food production on and around the urban space.
Next steps in growing community
The claim that we are growing a ‘sustainable’ community is difficult to make in any programme of this kind because it has to be proven over a substantial time frame. The conditions for sustainable living are in fact far from where we are currently operating. However, at this stage we feel that there is an urgent need to raise awareness and willingness of people to begin to consider change in their lifestyles which in turn brings about broader social and cultural change. The diverse set of activities and approaches adopted in the programme enable a range of networks to be established which in themselves enable the project to become more resilient in times of challenge and change. This is an important first step towards a sustainable design.
There are other important components of the design which are now emerging as a result of reflection and discussion with other groups and organisations engaged in similar work elsewhere. The most intriguing and compelling at the moment concern operational structure. Our project at this stage is structured as a company limited by guarantee, we are moving however towards a new design, establishing the Incredible Edible project as a charitable organisation. This enables all of the activity of the project to function under one organisational arrangement, and it ensures that the project can be handed over time to future generations, rather than being linked to any single group of individuals. This organisational structure also has operational benefits, it means we are in a position to begin to consider the transfer of assets into the project. In our case we are interested in the transfer of land, as this has obvious longitudinal benefit for the community, can be established now and then developed as a community food resource for the duration. It also enables people to commit to the project with confidence that the idea is one which is intended to remain in the infrastructure of the community for a considerable amount of time. This might not seem particularly significant, but in a world where change is a daily occurrence, the stability of knowing that there is a land source available for people from all across the community to work with as a shared resource generates just the sort of wealth, networked wealth, community confidence wealth, community interest and invested wealth which deepens the resilient bonding needed if we are to make the project sustainable across a range of environmental, cultural, economic and social asset bases.
Coda
In this paper I have tried to illustrate how the concept of the ‘google age’ offers us an interesting way of visioning sustainability and future living. It does this in a direct way, through connection, enabling conversation to occur at a planetary level, and it also can do this at a symbolic level, presenting us with a way of understanding that we need not orchestrate everything and manage everything to enable ideas and solutions to converge and flow. The very fact that we are able to create the conditions for growing new communities that aspire to become sustainable and that they can galvanise the power of connectivity that the internet provides to inform and influence their cause is in itself a fascinating way of thinking about social change. Perhaps like the seeds of that change, we start with our tiny worlds and extend to the big realities, we do not as yet know what these activities might grow into, but the process of nurturing them will in itself teach us much about how we can begin to ensure more sustainable ways of living in our communities.
References
Braungart, M., and McDonough, W. (2002) Cradle to Cradle. Remaking the way we make things. North point press. NY.
Clarke, P. (2009) A practical guide to a radical transition: framing the sustainable learning community. Education, Knowledge and Economy. 3:3: 183-197
Clarke, P. (2010) Community renaissance. In Coates, M. (2010) Educational Futures. London. Continuum
Clarke, P. (2010) Incredible Edible: how to grow sustainable communities, FORUM, 52(1), 69-76.
Lloyds of London (2010) Globalisation and risks for business: implications for an increasingly interconnected world.
Lovelock, J, [1979]. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford University Press
NEF (2009) A bit Rich – Calculating the real value to society of different professions without mental health. London. New Economics Foundation. net/wced-ocf.htm (accessed on October 12, 2009)
O’Sullivan, E. (1999) Transformative learning: Educational vision for the 21st century. Toronto. ZED books
Swimme, B.(1996) The hidden heart of the cosmos. Marynoll. New York. Orbis Books
World Bank (2010) Statistics Database
[2] Lloyds of london (2010) Globalisation and risks for business: implications for an increasingly interconnected world.
[4] Hypothesis, Gaia theory or Gaia principle is a controversial ecological hypothesis or theory proposing that the biosphere and the physical components of the Earth (atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere) are closely integrated to form a complex interacting system that maintains the climatic and biogeochemical conditions on Earth in a preferred homeorhesis. Originally proposed by James Lovelock as the earth feedback hypothesis, it was named the Gaia Hypothesis after the Greek primordial goddess of the Earth, at the suggestion of William Golding, Nobel prizewinner in literature and friend and neighbour of Lovelock. The hypothesis is frequently described as viewing the Earth as a single organism. (source Wikipedia)
[5] Arthur C. Clarke predicted in Popular Science in May 1970 that satellites would one day "bring the accumulated knowledge of the world to our fingertips" using an office console that would combine the functionality of the xerox, telephone, TV and a small computer so as to allow both data transfer and video conferencing around the globe.
[6] In an ongoing Esmee Fairbairn study of Incredible Edible - from our core data we have identified a number of themes related to climate, environment, and resources and peoples personal responses to these issues.
[7] Examples are all over the internet, search community growing and you will get around 181,000,000 hits
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