Conclusion

Nicholas Lawrence

The Coming Years So what is needed in the coming years? What changes need to be made to education? For one, funding to schools needs to stop being cut. Schools are struggling as it is to meet all their testing requirements, cutting funding to extracurricular programs and “nonessential” programs won’t help. If sustainability is going to be implemented in schools, it is going to have to be in a period of lessened financial crisis. Making the cultural argument for sustainability and actually implementing into the curriculum is going to be hard enough. Having a school in financial troubles may make it nearly impossible.

However sustainability curriculum is desperately needed. Most of the problems plaguing sustainability are the lack of education in the general public. They don’t understand the science of climate models thus they deny climate change. They don’t understand that there are hidden costs to the way they live. To make sure this doesn’t happen with the next generation, we need to teach them. Not only so they can deal with the huge problems we’ve created but so can more fully understand the relationship between man and nature.

Additionally a greater cultural respect and seriousness needs to be taken of the profession of teaching. Teachers have a very profound impact on the way children develop. They are the people responsible for ensuring that your children have all the tools at their disposal to learn. And higher education is extremely important if we are to tackle future socioeconomic problems. We need educated people.

Teaching isn’t just some job for people who couldn’t get a real job in the private sector. It’s a difficult job that requires a unique set of skills to be done effectively. However, these skills are almost never acknowledged. You’re not just reciting from some book, you are to act as a bridge between kids and knowledge, as cheesy as that sounds.