Intro+to+Why+Sustainability+Education+is+Needed

Nicholas Lawrence

Creating a Sociological Shift Becoming a sustainable culture is almost always broken down into making technological advances. If we just all had electric cars, if we just solar plants instead coal ones. We just need better science. While it is true our technical ingenuity can create some sustainable solutions, it isn’t the answer to all our problems. No matter how advanced we become, our how much better our science is we as a society will always fall short of sustainability because sustainability is not just technological ingenuity but rather a viewpoint. It is a framework in which to see the world.

Thus proponents of sustainability in the US have a unique challenge to overcome. Not only do they have push existing technology into new configurations, but they also have to shift people’s views of the world. The latter is much harder for changing the views someone has had of the world for all their life is a near impossible process. To create true sustainability in the US a culture shift needs to be created.

Currently, western culture is not conducive to sustainability and in many cases is hostile to the ideas of sustainability. On the surface, everyone supports sustainability. Who wouldn’t want to keep our current lifestyle while still providing the same opportunities for future generations? Yet below the surface sustainability ideals are attacked or shunned because economics is one of the controlling systems of our lives. How much money we have, how good our credit is, whether or not we can pay our loans off; these all have direct and profound consequences on our life. Yet the affects of pollution, waste and destruction of environment; these all have much more indirect and subtle but just as important effects on our lives. We need to shift the cultural framework from the direct and immediate to the indirect and long acting.

One of the best ways to do this is through education. Not just the education of adults but most importantly the education of children. Changing the set mind of an adult is hard. It is much easier to instead influence the development of a child’s mind. By educating future generations of children about sustainability topics and ideas, shift will hopefully begin in the American consciousness. Through education hopefully a sociological shift can be made in the US to a more sustainability orientated viewpoint. When these children grow up and move into work force, they’ll be much more open to the ideas of sustainability and sustainability as a country wide movement will gain power. Western culture is a wasteful society. Even more important is currently, western culture primes us to act wastefully and in an unsustainable manner. By educating the next round of children in sustainability, we can in essence “grow” a sustainability frame of mind in the US.