Sustainability scholar Iveta Silova, director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Global Education in ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, has co-authored a background report for the UNESCO’s Futures of Education Initiative.
The 15-page paper, Learning to become with the world: education for future survival, was commissioned by UNESCO as background information to assist in drafting the Futures of Education report to be published in 2021.
The abstract follows.
In the face of the multiple existential threats we have brought upon ourselves, this background paper calls for education to be reimagined and reconfigured around the future survival of the planet. To this end, we offerseven visionary declarations of what education could look like in 2050 and beyond. These declarations proceedfrom three premises. Firstly, human and planetary sustainability is one and the same thing. Secondly, anyattempts to achieve sustainable futures that continue to separate humans off from the rest of the world are delusional and futile. And thirdly, education needs to play a pivotal role in radically reconfiguring our place and agency within this interdependent world. This requires a complete paradigm shift: from learning about theworld in order to act upon it, to learning to become with the world around us. Our future survival depends onour capacity to make this shift.