Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I. Introduction
As the social and environmental costs of our global capitalist economic system are laid
increasingly bare,1 a rising tide of proposals calls for radically reforming the political institutions
and economic structures that govern human societies. These inspired efforts to create the
“next system” are sorely needed, but to be successful, must be accompanied by another crucial
enabling step beyond evolving our institutions.
Radical change requires a constituency to support, propagate, and maintain these measures.
Citizens must be armed with not only factual knowledge and practical skills, but also an ethical
intuition and worldview to embody transformative new modes of living. Otherwise, the
transition will not be easily accepted. Society could easily revert to the extractive and wealth-
hoarding logic of 20th century global capitalism, a force that has proven surprisingly and
stubbornly resilient. The most powerful levers of change require evolving “the mindset or
paradigm out of which the system—its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters—arises.” 2 In
short, we must change underlying beliefs, not simply alter institutional incentives. A
fundamental mold of our worldviews and reasoning is the formal education system through
which most people experience. Such education systems provide a prime opportunity for
creative rethinking.
As educational philosopher Zachary Stein has characterized, mainstream education with all its
prevailing baggage is the meta crises, the so-called crisis behind the crises. Our present
educational system churns out workers, not citizens, who uncritically and unquestioningly
uphold the neoliberal economic order. For most, the logic and assumptions of the capitalist
system is baked into their conception of society and their place in it, defining themselves as
consumers with limited agency and choice only over which brands to purchase. They are
directed to pursue certain types of jobs, to celebrate materialistic progress, and to venerate
financial wealth, in service of a dialectical story of capitalist triumph. Meanwhile, they suffer
from what Richard Louv has termed “nature deficit disorder”3 because of diminishing
1
Monbiot, George 2016. “Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems”, The Guardian, Apr 15,
2016, at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
2
Meadows, Donella H. 2008. Thinking in Systems – A Primer.
3
Louv, Richard 2005, 2008. Last Child in the Woods.
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opportunities to engage with the natural world caused by the patterns of modern economic
and technological development and a broader alienation from the democratic political process. 4
Schools should not simply be vocational training centers; they are an expression of our society’s
values. As cornerstones of the democratic tradition, educational institutions set social priorities,
model appropriate behavior, and nurture worldviews. They can transmit our fundamental
sense of care for others in society, not merely equip students for the rat race, and in doing so,
take on a more important function in society as a center of community. Creating a shift in
values requires updating and rethinking this basic building block of modern society.
In this essay, we (i) examine the failure of our modern education system to nurture and equip
citizens to make ethical choices for society and our environment, (ii) introduce a new idea for a
comprehensive new p-12 educational curriculum based on the pillars of ecological literacy and
civics, (iii) describe the features of such ecological-civics curriculum, and (iv) propose an
implementation roadmap for the diffusion of ecological-civics consciousness throughout public
schools in the United States and internationally.
“It is a well-known problem that too many schools today function as soulless factories of despair
where teachers, administrators, and students mechanically enact their assigned scripts and
prescribed roles. Boredom is the elephant in the (class) room. Engaging, vibrant, and
academically rigorous schools seem to be the exception, not the rule.”
--Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco, Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, and Carola Suarez-Orozco 5
The origins of the American public school system drew inspiration from the Prussian
educational model that prepared obedient workers for factory jobs in the industrializing
economy of the 1800s.6 The methods and mentality behind the “factory-model education
system” still prevail today, not only in the United States, but in many other parts of the world.
4
See DK 2014, “Why young people don’t vote”, The Economist, at http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-
explains/2014/10/economist-explains-24
5
Suarez-Orozco, Marcela M., et al. 2010. “Introduction: Architecture of Care” in Educating the Whole Child for the
Whole World—The Ross School Model and Education for the Global Era, Suarez-Orozco, Marcela M. & Sattin-Bajaj.
Carolyn, eds.
6
Rose, Joel 2002. “How to Break Free of Our 19 th Century Model Education System.” The Atlantic,
athttp://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/how-to-break-free-of-our-19th-century-factory-model-
education-system/256881/
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These features include hierarchical, top-down management; separation from the community;
standardization; and a focus on efficiency, i.e. “producing results.” Unlike the traditions of
classical education or even the early period of American public schooling, the modern day
public school is a distorted model of its predecessors, with limited attention to ethics and
human values, interpersonal relations (or social etiquette), and understanding of the natural
world.
Many of these obsessions are reflected in the larger industrial economic system in which
educational institutions operate, often characterized as the “neoliberal economic order.” With
this logic, large numbers matter, but individuals and communities do not. The present
educational system also breeds overspecialization of work functions, creating artificial
boundaries to delineate content: academic “disciplines.” Compartmentalization inhibits
learners from solving problems holistically. It blinds them to interconnections and emerging
patterns. This deficiency suited captains of industry, as managers had the vantage point to
connect the dots for themselves, while maintaining dominance and control over the masses, at
the expense of the individual worker.
An unquenchable thirst for “maximizing profit” motivates industrial actors, who are
disconnected from the lifecycles of nature and the long-term social health of communities.
Economic decision-makers focus on short-term business cycles, sacrificing human well-being,
the integrity of communities, and despoil nature, with nary a second thought. Over time, this
mode of production and social organization has been shown to be fundamentally at odds with
social solidarity and ecological health. Our global economic activity is already causing us to
critically approach or exceed four out of nine critical “planetary boundaries” as defined by the
Stockholm Resilience Institute: atmospheric carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus flows from
agriculture dumped into our river systems, land use changes, and the rate of biodiversity loss. 7
In the process, we are compromising the Earth’s interconnected life support systems, and since
every system is connected to every other system, any one breach of a critical boundary is
enough to shift the entire system into destabilizing collapse. While power may be concentrated
in the hands of a few, overall, society’s choices are shaped by a worldview that causes us to
adopt a destructive economic operating system predicated on short-termism and a perpetual
growth model that fails to respect ecological limits.
At the individual level, we are increasingly disconnected from our natural environment and
human communities
7
Stockholm Resilience Institute. “Planetary Boundaries – an Update,” at
http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2015-01-15-planetary-boundaries---an-update.html,
accessed Feb 26, 2017.
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Because of a handful of global mega trends, in a few generations, human societies have been
cut off from experiencing the natural environment first-hand. Urbanization has moved people
away from the countryside and agrarian activities, where an intimate understanding of weather
and soil was long crucial to livelihood. Industrialization, ignited by the invention of the steam
engine and internal combustion engine and modern discovery of the processes to refine
petroleum ‘liberated’ humans from the whims of natural currents such as the direction and
velocity of the wind and the seasons of the year, and obfuscated the limitations of manual
labor, and together with urbanization, led to profound transformations of our natural
landscapes to this day. Globalization and specialization of commerce have elongated and
subdivided supply chains, so that end-consumers, and even workers working on specific links in
a supply chain, have scant idea of what natural resources their products originate from.
Financialization has created speculative bubbles over esoteric, complex financial instruments
that avoid regulatory oversight and confound the imaginations of lay people, yet are collectively
valued many times more than the real economy, resulting in a monumental misallocation of
capital away from the things that really matter. And finally, digitization has enhanced economic
productivity in an unprecedented way, shrinking the power of mainframe computers to fit in
our pockets, but it has also made us slaves to our virtual personas and digital mobile devices--
often at the expense of real-world connections with nature, community, and even our own
family members. Instant gratification has become the norm.
Taken together, these trends, fueled in no small part by the economic order and underpinned
by a problematic educational system, have created a disconnect between people, nature, and
human communities, resulting in ignorance or indifference about the consequences of our
behavior and actions at all levels. Think about the following dichotomies as examples--
individual rights vs. community responsibilities, mind vs. body, human life vs. non-human life,
fellow citizens vs. immigrants, nationalism vs. globalism and economy vs. ecology, but to name
a few. From individual choices, to business behavior to governments forming international
trade arrangements, the illusion of separation has become culturally prevalent and has resulted
in the multitude of ecological and social crises we now confront.
More recently, studies tell us that humanity’s disconnection from the environment is not just
nature’s loss, but ours as well. The loss of contact with nature not only deprives us of the
necessary understanding of our earth systems to avert ecological tragedy, but also of the
physical, mental and even spiritual well-being that comes with being in the outdoors. We suffer
today from what Richard Louv has called “nature deficit syndrome,” which among other effects,
include a loss of creativity and increased rates of anxiety and depression. 8 As aptly described in
Robert Putnam’s emblematic essay “Bowling Alone,” human society is increasingly atomized.
Social solidarity and civic responsibility have diminished as community organizations
increasingly fall by the wayside. Our main expression of connection is through consumption of
consumer goods and popular entertainment, instead of civil society.9
In sum, our modern education system has fallen short in the following ways:
8
Louv, Richard 2005, 2008. Last Child in the Woods.
9
Putnam, Robert 2000. Bowling Alone.
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It is important to clarify from the outset that while the focus of the rest of this paper is on
school design and related curriculum and pedagogical aspects of schooling, schooling is only a
subset of education, which, in its broadest sense, would include parenting at all stages
(including pre-natal), the hidden curriculum not only in schools but also as embedded in society
and culture indefinitely, so as to effectively encompass the entire human experience. For
practical purposes, we will focus the remaining discussion of education on schools and their
immediate communities.
We know that our current educational systems are failing, and that new conceptions of schools
are necessary. But in order to reconceptualize a system, we must first be clear what goals we
want to system to achieve, strive for, or support. A clear, consistent articulation of the purpose
of education is surprisingly elusive in the academic field. That is because education has always
meant different things to different audiences. According to Erin Lynn Raab, schooling across
societies have always attempted to serve four basic purposes, which often work in conflict. 10
These four purposes are individual possibility, social possibility, individual efficiency and social
efficiency, as summarized in a 2-by-2 matrix in Figure 1 below, with the horizontal axis toggling
between the individual to collective levels, and the vertical axis moving between intrinsic (i.e. of
possibility and development) and instrumental (i.e. utilitarian, economic efficiency) purposes.
10
Raab, Erin Lynn. 2017. Why School? A Systems Perspective on Creating Schooling for Flourishing Individuals and
a Thriving Democratic Society (Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University). Available at https://tinyurl.com/Raab-
WhySchool
11
Ibid.
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good life. At the collective/societal level, efficiency means a trained labor force that is
“productive” in a growth-based economy which has by now largely co-opted other spheres of
culture. In contrast, intrinsic purposes are focused on development and flourishing without
any fixed outcome. At the individual level, individual possibility would emphasize character
development, healthy relationships, creative self-expression, health and wellbeing 12. Collective
possibility would encompass a sense of community, diversity, cohesion, citizenship and
collective wellbeing. There is much more to be said about the individual and collective
possibility that Raab discusses in her work, but she concludes, and I agree, that in rethinking
school design, we should align ourselves around the intrinsic (both individual and collective)
rather than instrumental purposes of school because in many aspects, the latter undermines
and works at cross-purposes with the former. These conflicting purposes go a ways to explain
the litany of failures of our current educational system covered in the previous section. Notice
that these failures all fall within intrinsic purposes, but notice further that such a list does not
mean that there aren’t any failures of fulfilling instrumental purposes, but that I have already
exercised a choice to focus on individual and social possibility rather than of efficiency.
An additional point is worth making. School is not merely an incubator for community
and society. Rather, school is an integral part of community and society. School design often
reflects our beliefs about the broader economy and society. If notions of rugged individualism,
independence and career progression are valued, then you are more likely to see desks and
chairs arranged in islands is a grid-styled pattern, less group projects and heavy emphasis on
testing and grade. If intrinsic purposes inform school design, then one would expect to see
curriculum features that more closely resemble what is described in the rest of this paper.
To further develop the focus on individual and social possibility, I propose a different
articulation of the proper purpose of education—to help us understand what it means to be
human. This core purpose can be elaborated with three spiraling strands of inquiry that
encompass intrinsic purposes of education at multiple levels:13
12
Ibid.
13
There are parallels with Zachary Stein’s crises of meaning, capabilities, legitimacy and
intelligibility. (https://jimruttshow.blubrry.net/the-jim-rutt-show-transcripts/transcript-of-episode-57-
zak-stein-on-education-in-a-time-between-worlds/)
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Third, developing skills and capabilities to catalyze transition to flourishing at all levels of
life—individual, family, community and society.14
“All education is environmental education...by what is included or excluded we teach the young
that they are part of or apart from the natural world.”
-- David W. Orr, environmental educator
At the risk of casting an overly crude characterization, the current educational paradigm seems
to indoctrinate children to serve as subservient workers and unquestioning backers of an
industrial system that violates the limits to ecological sustainability and disrupts the fabric of
human communities. We propose a fundamental rethink of the role, content and form of
education. Education based on the interconnected pillars of democratic citizenship and
ecological literacy will give rise to more responsible, empathetic individuals who value
collaboration, sustainability and solidarity. Whether in their personal, professional, or public
lives, citizens inculcated with this set of diverse ideas will be better-informed, guided by ethics,
and more sensitive to communal and ecological needs. In short, they will be ready for
successful participation in the Next System. In this section, we will further elaborate on the
pillar principles of civics and ecological literacy, and then further delve into the characteristics
of an ecological-civics educational system.
Ecological literacy is the ability to understand the natural systems and principles of
organization that make life on earth possible and to understand the principles of organization
of ecological communities and using those principles for creating sustainable human
communities. Ecological literacy is a powerful concept as it creates a foundation for an
integrated approach to environmental problems. Ecological literacy is distinct from what is
14
Chad: Nice framing, Julian. The three parts echo the I, We, It of Integral philosophy. Or Beauty, Goodness, and
Truth. Or art, ethics, science. Etc.
15
Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney 1963. The Civic Culture.
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As we hope to show below, there is significant overlap between ecological thinking and civics,
and in fact, there is strong reason to believe that one reinforces the other. Without these
fundamental literacies, students who become adult citizens will be less likely to design the
“correct” Next System or uphold Next System ideas; less likely to vote for pro-social outcomes;
and less likely to make good decisions whether as policymakers, community leaders or
entrepreneurs.
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touching, feeling and experiencing nature and its laws in action. Such
experiential and hands on learning, all while outdoors in the presence of nature,
is a “two-fer” – they provide first hand experiential learning, which is more
effective than mere classroom lectures, and being outdoors provides added
benefits of fresh air, physical exercise and mental we) would be important
components as antidotes to nature deficit syndrome. Research shows that
simply being in the presence of nature cultivates experiential learning and
curiosity, and goes so far as to nurture a sense of wonder and spiritual-
existential intelligence. A famous study by Edith Cobb published forty years ago
has also been shown a strong link between intense experiences in nature in early
childhood (ages 5 through 12) to stimulation of creativity and imagination. 17
o 13 core routines of nature connection (Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with
Nature)
o Nature connection serves as a foundation of ecological thinking, relational
thinking, systems thinking, ethics and civics.
Whole Child Development and Multiple Intelligences. In addition to exposure and
competency with specific academic content, an ecologically literate child will achieve
competency in other important areas. Drawing from Howard Gardner’s framework of
“multiple intelligences,”18 we identify a set of ten types of intelligences that can serve as
a heuristic for a holistic education: verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-
kinesthetic, musical-rhythmic, visual-spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic-
ecological, existential-spiritual, and moral. Conventional public educational curricula
focus on the first two, and if resources permit, sometimes cater to third, fourth and
fifth. Rarely, however, are the remaining five intelligences, which lie at the core of
democratic-ecological literacy, explicitly taught, discussed or practiced. A few
additional points are worth considering:
o Under the interpersonal literacy, an ecological-civics curriculum would cultivate
collaboration, exploration and active learning, rather than solely individual work,
lecture-style teaching and passive learning. In addition to cultivating skills of
conversation, cooperation, listening and empathy, collaborative project work has
also been shown by studies to enhance learning and retention compared to
more conventional lecture-style teaching and individual assessment.
o Existential-spiritual intelligence is worthy of particular mention. Many react with
unease at the thought of spiritual education at public schools for two main
reasons – (i) ideological - often due to the Constitutional doctrine of separating
church and state, and the erroneous conflation of spirituality with religion; and
(ii) the marginalization of non-rationale, non-scientific ways of knowing. There is
a growing body of science on existence of spiritual dimension to child
development and growing evidence of benefits of nurturing spiritual growth
17
Louv, Richard, 2005, 2008. Last Child in the Woods (citing Cobbs, Edith 1977, The Ecology of Imagination in
Childhood).
18
See Smith, Mark K. 2002, 2008. “Howard Gardner and multiple intelligences,” the encyclopedia of informal
education, http://www.infed.org/mobi/howard-gardner-multiple-intelligences-and-education.
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Web and Circles of Life. Students will be grounded in foundational ecological principles
of life through classroom instruction and outdoor fieldtrips. Such foundational
principles which consists of three dimensions, beginning first with structural elements of
ecosystems, namely the individual flora, fauna abiotic elements such as soil, sunshine
and rain. This first dimensions is the most intuitive because it is material and observable,
but unfortunately, mainstream understanding of the environment rarely extends
beyond this first dimension. A second dimension is patterns of life, or relationships, e.g.
predatory-prey relationships, parasite-host relationships, symbiosis and competition,
among others. This second dimension is sometimes depicted visually as food webs,
although most food webs typically only on illustrate predator-prey relationships to the
exclusion of others. The third dimension consists of processes, such as photosynthesis,
decomposition, nutrient and water cycling, mutation, speciation and evolution, among
others.20 These second and third dimensions of ecology, especially if imparted at a
young age, begin to embed in the child’s consciousness a strong sense of
19
Miller, Lisa 2015. The Spiritual Child.
20
Capra, Fritjof. “The Web of Life,” in interview with Jeffrey Mishlove, available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLiRXM2oZ_U, accessed Feb 25, 2017.
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Morality and Ethics. Technical knowledge by itself is insufficient for pro-social decision-
making. It also requires a restoration of civic virtue, a sense of responsibility to our
fellow beings, to other creatures who share this planet with us, and to future
generations. Education can help students practice explicitly reasoning through moral
quandaries, and develop an ethical intuition that informs future decisions, whether
personal or societal. Certainly, every single school without exception should include
some version of morality, ethics, or integrity as part of its core values. In terms of
classroom instruction, humanities subjects, especially history and social studies, provide
21
Capra, Fritjof 2005. “Speaking Nature’s Language – Principles for Sustainability” in Ecoliteracy – Educating Our
Children for a Sustainable World, edited by Michael K. Stone and Zenobia Barlow.
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natural opportunities to introduce moral and ethics education using historical, real life
events. And as mentioned earlier, the performing arts may be a creative way to explore
interesting ethical issues. As society and schools become more comfortable in
embracing spiritual and religious education, additional avenues for discussing values will
open. Certainly, parochial schools will already naturally be engaging in such instruction.
Yet another way to impart moral education and tapping into ancient wisdom would be
through the history and values of indigenous cultures, which are rich in teachings of
humans’ proper relationships with its environment and non-human living beings and
can be introduced in social studies, geography or history classes. With global and cross-
cultural perspectives in mind (see discussion below), moral and value frameworks from
international culture can be introduced and analyzed.
Participation, Civic Dialogue and Understanding Power. Students are trained in the
principles and mechanisms of democracy, including respectful discussion [critical
thinking, logic (fallacies), discus and disagree without getting personal, persuasive
debating], free and fair voting, legislative initiative, and organizing for action.
o These lessons are put into practice within the classroom and school itself, e.g.
structured discourse on school or student issues, and democratic processes for
selecting new members of student government. In addition, such lessons are
reinforced by exposure to or, where appropriate, exposure to the civic process in
the local community and at other levels of society. Inside and outside the
classroom, principles of democratic action, participation, consultation, and
respect for diverse points of view should be habituated.
o Hand-in-hand with civics education is getting essential understanding of how
power in our society works. As civics educator and former White House official
Eric Liu observes, there is pervasive illiteracy of power, about “what it is, who
has it, how it operates, how it flows, what part of it is visible, what part of it is
not, why some people have it, why that's compounded.” He explains that as a
result of this general illiteracy, “those few who do understand how power
operates in civic life, those who understand how a bill becomes a law, yes, but
also how a friendship becomes a subsidy, or how a bias becomes a policy, or how
a slogan becomes a movement, the people who understand those things wield
disproportionate influence, and they're perfectly happy to fill the vacuum
created by the ignorance of the great majority.”22 If we are to be serious about
nurturing civic participation, we should not shy away from having frank and
serious conversations about power, especially with the higher grade students.
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decision making and conflict resolution. As a further step, sister school relationships
with schools in other cities, states or foreign schools can be established, and cross-
cultural exchange relationships, either through teleconference or actual physical
exchange programs as resources permit, would help students begin to forge cross-
border inter-cultural relationships with their counterparts in their sister schools. The
goal is to sow the seeds of connections that can blossom into meaningful friendships,
and consequentially foster knowledge exchange and intercultural appreciation and
literacy. The need for global cultural literacy has never been greater. Even the OECD,
which administers the PISA tests, the international standard for comparing educational
systems around the world, is contemplating the addition of testing for global and
cultural skills to their assessments.23 [Discuss neuro-diversity, disabilities and inclusion.]
23
Schleicher, Andreas 2016. “Pisa tests to include global skills and cultural awareness” in BBC News, at
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36343602
24
Orr, David W. 2005. “Place and Pedagogy” in Ecoliteracy – Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World,
edited by Michael K. Stone and Zenobia Barlow (quoting Paul Shepard).
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vocabulary and new narratives are needed to equip our leaders with the tools of
persuasion to influence and shape public policy towards the ideals of a more
democratic-ecological society.
Cooperation and Collaboration. The grand narrative of success in life being a product of
winner-take-all competitive advantage results from a misinterpretation of Darwinian
evolutionary theory. The reality is that cooperation and altruistic behavior is at least as
important as “survival of the fittest” in the success of living species. 30 [In human
systems, whether it is within the family or the workplace, cooperation or teamwork is
essential. Similarly, the marketplace and economy, alliances, partnerships and joint
ventures are important for commercial success, even in the midst of competition.
Despite all this, performance assessments in schools today are virtually all on the
individual basis – there are clear metrics for individual attainment, but scarcely any for
group or team achievement. While promoting autonomy is important to nurture
individual character, intrapersonal skills and self-confidence, it will be vital to also
nurture cooperation, collaboration, and conflict-management skills in preparation for
the real world. With automation replacing many tasks completed by individuals
operating independent of teams, the jobs that are left are increasingly team-based.
Complex problems require teams of folks with different skill sets. After all, many wicked
problems are a result of collective action failures, so it is imperative that students be
equipped with the skills to work in teams. The trend towards collaborative project work
strongly suggests that new metrics to assess effectiveness in collaboration need to be
developed. [Discuss also Lynn Margulis and her work on symbiosis as a driver of
evolution; and the new science on trees in a forest that communicate, coordinate and
cooperate through roots and mycelial networks forming a forest super-structure] There
are a number of useful frameworks such as Prosocial31 and EL Education’s We Are Crew32
that can assist educator in promoting evidenced-based methodologies for collaboration.
Appropriate Role of Technology. A return to nature does not also suggest a return to
stone tablets in favor over digital tablets. On the contrary, a democratic-ecological
curriculum is likely to use digital technology in a more sophisticated manner, to enhance
the understanding of systems thinking and systems dynamics with mind maps and
agent-based computer modelling. This principle of there being an appropriate role for
technology is a microcosm for the limitations of over-reliance on technological solutions
in solving non-linear emergent problems arising out of complex systems with scant
attention paid to behavioral or cognitive dimensions of policy. Techno-utopianism is a
malaise that afflicts many in the authors’ home bioregion of Silicon Valley. Emerging
30
Wahl, Daniel C. 2017. “Life’s economy is primarily based on collaborative rather than competitive advantage,”
Feb 1, 2017, at https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/lifes-economy-is-primarily-based-on-collaborative-rather-
than-competitive-advantage-e7c5f55466fd#.fefbotr1n.
31
See Atkins, Paul W.B., et al. 2019. Prosocial. See also the efforts by Prosocial School (a circle within Prosocial
World, a non-profit organization founded by the authors of Prosocial) that aims to disseminate
32
See Berger Ron, et al. 201?. We Are Crew: A Teamwork Approach to School, available at
https://eleducation.org/resources/we-are-crew
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studies in neuroscience, behavioral psychology and other related fields are raising our
collective understanding of patterns of human thought and behavior. This new
understanding has profound implications for public policy and strongly suggest that any
viable solution to our biggest social and environmental challenges will need to alter
human consciousness and perceptions to inspire behavioral and cultural shifts, rather
than just present “plug-and-play” technological gizmos.33
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and households.37 Because these loans need to be paid back not only in full, but with
additional interest, it creates pressure on borrowers to earn more revenues by selling
more stuff and promoting every more consumption of natural resources, and hence
economic growth. Throughout history, commentators have observed that those who
control the issuance of money wield disproportionate power over the economy and its
participants.38 The adage that “money is the root of all evil” is not too far off the truth,
but is typically attributed to human greed, rather than to structural mechanisms
through which money is created in the system and societal power is correspondingly
concentrated. A democratic-ecological education will help high school level students
learn principles of more life-dignifying and society-honoring economic paradigms
embodied in alternative fields such as ecological economics, solidary economics and
participatory economics. In each case the role, genesis and transmission of money in
the system will be a fundamental topic to be elucidated and tackled sooner rather than
later.
From Green Economy Jobs to Whole Economy Jobs. It would be foolish for educators
to engage in the business of predicting the future job market, especially given current
rate of change. However, to be relevant, it is imperative that we connect at least certain
aspects of a democratic-ecologicalan ecological-civics curriculum as preparation for
actual jobs. There should be no compromise to foundational STEM curriculum, and skills
such as GIS mapping can be introduced to computer science courses, while electrical
circuitry will, as is typically be the case, be part of science lab. The key is to keep abreast
of job market trends and adapt skill-building at the higher grades correspondingly.
[NEED: deeper discussion on (i) calling out “bullshit jobs” (David Graeber), (ii) the fact
that some of the jobs that we need, such as care and art creators, project managers, are
not overtly green jobs, but will be critical for building a whole society and whole
economy39; and (iii) finding one’s calling/purpose in life – see Chelsea Mathilda
Robinson’s posts on Medium]
37
Ibid.
38
See Bendell, Jem, et al. 2014. “Money and Society MOOC,” Institute of Sustainable Leadership.
39
See Carmichael, Douglas. 2020. Gardenworld Politics (available at https://medium.com/gardenworld-
politics/chapter-2-gardenworld-what-is-it-75c1f821ef9e), in which he describes a few vocational categories that
will be important in our transition through ecological crises, e.g. greening everything, rethinking manufacturing,
care, art, and managers.
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The theory of change of education as a nodal point for systems change needs to be put
in proper context.
First, applying the conventional notions of scale from the business would be deeply
flawed.[Discuss the myth of scale in social movements and the value of small changes within
larger networks of change. Taut scale versus slack scale. Need place-based.]
Second, the proposals here, like in many “next-system” proposals, would fail in isolation.
It cannot be “rolled-out” en masse in accordance to the current rules of our economic system.
The current surrounding institutional infrastructure will not support it, and that is exactly the
point. The current system has to collapse, and is collapsing, for a new kind of educational
infrastructure to take hold. The pilot initiatives that plant the seeds for this change, together
with the many other initiatives at all levels of society, will create the conditions that
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Third, the scale of change of even a single prototype is potentially larger than most
people think, due to the community-wide ripple effects that result from placing learning
institutions at the hub of community. When the efforts of multiple prototypes and pilots are
linked with purpose, what can result is a Networked Improvement Community (NIC). We will
discuss this next.
Restructuring education gives us an opportunity to re-imagine not only a new curriculum, but
to ponder the role of schools in society. Rather than just outposts for training future workers or
closets to stash adolescents in lieu of child care, could schools become the center of a vibrant
community life? Can they, in fact, becoming basic building blocks of the Next System?
A place for secular culture to convene. In the past, the public square served that
function, but over time was replaced by the big box mall, an unfortunate icon of
consumerist culture. With the mainstreaming of electronic commerce and pushback
against homogenized products, shopping malls are beginning to lose their popularity.
Could schools fill the void of physical spaces and give purpose to public assembly?
Elevates the role of education in society. Making schools a focal point of community
elevates the status of our educators and teachers to community leaders. This also
affirms society’s commitment to democratic-ecological principles by putting them at the
center of life, rather than a side activity that is “nice to have.” A lot more can and needs
be said about the evolving role of the teacher and the challenge of marshalling much
needed resources to nurture the learning and development needs of our educators in
this new democratic-ecological paradigm than this paper provides. One point of
inspiration we would like to note is the six months of mandatory training in systems
thinking, complexity theory and chaos theory that each teacher at the Ross School, a
private school based in New York, must undertake.40
40
Ross Institute, video on Ross Learning System Sustainability Thread at http://www.rosslearningsystem.org/
(accessed Mar 5, 2017)
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education, with the principle of life-long education in mind.41 Life-long learning will take
on increasing importance with the onset of automation and the consequential loss of
jobs in many industrial sectors.
C. Vision
Consistent with David Orr’s insight that “all education is environmental education”, our vision is
for ecological-civics consciousness principles and content to serve as the foundation for every p
-12 curriculum in the United States and other parts of the world. Consequently, with
ecological-civics consciousness evolving into baseline worldview for every citizen, we imagine a
future where collective decision-making at all levels, from personal decision-making on product
purchases to the discourse and election of our public official will be better informed, ethically
guided, and sensitive to the needs of our community and ecology. Our public schools will take
on a new role as centers of community, initially by serving the institutional role of nurturing our
children and transmitting ecological-civics consciousness.
D. Mission
To accelerate the incorporation of ecological-civics consciousness principles and content in
every p-12 curriculum in the United States and other parts of the world to enable each citizen
to achieve his her or full potential and contribute to collective decision-making that is better
informed, ethically guided, and sensitive to societal, communal and ecological needs.
We will create of a center of excellence (CoE) that will carry out the following actions:
a. Create Community.
41
There are pilot programs of life-long schools being started today. We are aware of a new school being
established in Shanghai that will cater to educating students from ages 3 through 70.
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Among other things, this mapping exercise will help us identify potential
allies, funders, partners, and pilot testing schools to roll out ecological
literacy curricula.
ii. As we will create community, content and capacity, we will solidify our
relationships with like-minded schools, school districts, research and
advocacy organizations and other strategic partners to leverage resources of
the network and strengthen the movement of mainstreaming democratic-
ecological literacy.
b. Create Content. With internal resources and in partnership with leading experts,
develop democratic-ecological literacy resources, pedagogical techniques,
implementation diagnoses and other related content. Such content would be
tailored for different age groups and grade levels so that they are age and context
appropriate. They will be open sourced so that they are freely available to the
world, and freely editable so that contributions worldwide are accepted. The open
source model is necessary not only to accelerate the development of content, but to
provide a mechanism for the adaptation of content to local contexts, cultures and
climate.
c. Create Capacity. The CoE will not only offer its resources online, but also provide
human intellectual capital via consultation where practical, and bring in experts,
specialists and students of ecological literacy where opportunity arises. Through
partnerships with existing outdoor education organizations, the CoE provide a will
also develop and design outdoor and nature education programs tailored to
different contexts, geographies and times of year.
Ultimately, the CoE will serve as a nexus of a global community of democratic-ecological literacy
advocates, practitioners and supporters.
Create a research, public advocacy and change management unit that will, through
partnerships with school districts, PTAs and relevant county and state education agencies,
develop strategies for the diffusion and incorporation of ecological literacy in schools. This unit
would be focused on the “business” side (as opposed to curriculum side) of educational change,
articulating the “value case” for prioritizing democratic-ecological literacy, developing the
roadmap for implementation, and charting the course for funding.
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districts and schools. To address what Ann Evans describes as the “snicker factor” (i.e. the
“you can’t be serious” reaction to such proposal to make democratic-ecological literacy a
priority by educators facing pressing problems of high dropout rates, absenteeism, low
academic achievement, campus violence and teacher shortages and so on), we will need to
make the case for how democratic-ecological curricula are in fact solutions for these
problems.42
For example, we expect that outdoor education and field trips, constructivist approaches to
classroom pedagogy and the cultivation of a sense of responsibility through life-giving tasks
such as nurturing the school garden will likely result in more engaged learning, lower
absenteeism and lower dropout rates. We expect a more humanistic education that equips
children with community values and conflict resolutions schools to have a positive impact on
reducing campus violence. We also expect the elevated status of schools and teachers to
benefit retention of teachers. We will need to gather data with the help of partners in our
network to support these hypotheses and strengthen our case.
3. Establish Model Eco-Civic-schools (Year 5 onwards for first school in California; Year
10 onwards in select other states and countries).
In Taiwan, the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation has done innovative work with setting up recycling
centers island-wide staffed by local volunteers in the community, while also developing more
42
Ann Evans, “Changing Schools: A Systems View” in Ecoliteracy – Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World,
edited by Michael K. Stone and Zenobia Barlow.
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On the funding side, we will seek out philanthropic foundations and socially conscious
businesses to lend support to the mission of the CoE. [Include discussion of public financing
vehicles such as social impact bonds.]
VI. Conclusion
As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. But what if the village is no longer up to the
task? What if the village falls short of instilling the right set of values to be a responsible citizen
and right framework for understanding ecological principles to be more responsible stewards of
nature? A deficient village describes where we are now today. But imagine now, if that child,
and others like her, are equipped with the right skills, insights, empathy and moral courage to
exercise choices at home and in their neighborhood, vote on referenda and public officials, and
contribute to discourse on public policies. What if schools evolve from being the factories of
compliant workers to new centers of flourishing communities, and nurturers of the next
generation of moral and self-actualized citizens who can correctly shape the Next System?
What if, it is in fact the children who need to reshape the village? A democratic-ecological
literacy approach may be a possible means to help society in that task.
***
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Acknowledgements
Gratitude to Kevin Hsu for numerous discussions and early conception and input in early drafts
of the paper. Additional thanks to Will Parish, Karen Cowe, Erin Raab, Joe Brewer for their
inspiration and substantive feedback.
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