“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Although an increasing share of the world’s population believes, as 97 percent of scientists do, in anthropogenic climate change and the need for shifts in human behaviors to ensure a sustainable future, there remains a sizeable gap between people’s beliefs and their behavior. Why are people sometimes unwilling to engage in sustainable behaviors? Are there differences between those who are willing to behave sustainably and those who are not? What are some barriers to behaving sustainably that policy makers can address?
Erin Hamilton, Neil Lewis, Jr., co-Editors-in-Chief, Michigan Journal of Sustainability, (2017)
1 Learning for intercultural understanding and solidarity
As an international learning project, ‘Learning to Become’’ is developing around two main concepts, environmentalism and ecology, to produce a behavioural change across generations to live sustainably. Environmentalism gives real urgency to the agenda of our relationship to nature, putting forward the idea that marginalized topics, such as climate change, species extinction, pollution, renewable energy, and overpopulation, should be central to creating alternative patterns of lifelong education, consumption, production, and leisure. This also means considering nature in an expanded field, interlinking with biological, technological, social and political knowledge systems. The second concept, ecology, is understood as environmentalism-in-action, an insuppressible dynamic process, where nature, human and other-than-human, co-perform. Indeed the world is viewed both as a performed ecology, directed by human environmental management, and as an ecology performing itself, fuelled by climate. This allows us to think of nature in embodied, active, distinctly relational terms, whereby production of new knowledge across science, arts and sociology is possible within the transcendent , as well as within the everyday knowledge of nature. What is missing is a universal behavioural narrative linking culture and ecology. In this context, we should be incorporating myths into future education that explain the world and human experience. Myths are as relevant to us today as they were to the ancients because they answer timeless questions and serve as a behavioural compass to each generation. Nowadays we need to incorporate myths into our curricula that are instructive and act as guides to social norms for living in harmony with nature. They also support the application of arts reasoning to explain sustainability. Science alone is not sufficient (#aartes).
Intercultural understanding is an essential part of learning to adapt to climate change and its socioeconomic consequences so that we may live inclusively and securely with others in the rapidly changing world of the twenty-first century. In particular, educational pedagogies and curricula should assist young people to become responsible local and global citizens, equipped through their education for living and working together in an interconnected world.
What is required to achieve this is a root and branch change in curriculum and pedagogy. The aim is to free students to develop a personal intercultural understanding as they learn to to build their own body of knowledge for valuing their own cultures, languages and beliefs, and those of others. Personal, group and national identities now have to be shaped within the variable and changing dynamics of cultural ecology. Motivation to learn to live sustainably and inclusively across national borders must come through invitational learning, where curriculum and syllabus are negotiated to motivate individuals to become cultural explorers. Intercultural understanding involves students learning about and engaging with the human ecosystem in all its varieties. The aim is to recognise commonalities and differences and create connections with others so as to cultivate mutual respect for Earth’s biodiversity of which we are now the dominant part.
Intercultural understanding is a major, missing theme in Western education that:-:
- combines personal, interpersonal and social knowledge and skills;
- involves students learning to value and view critically their own cultural perspectives and practices and those of others. This takes place through their cross curricula interactions with people and texts;
- encourages students to make connections between their own worlds and the worlds of others, to build on shared interests and commonalities and negotiate or mediate differences;
- develops students’ abilities to communicate and empathise with others and to analyse intercultural experiences critically;
- offers opportunities for them to consider their own beliefs and attitudes in a new light, and so gain insight into themselves and others;
- stimulates students’ interest in the lives of others;
- cultivates values and dispositions such as curiosity, care, empathy, reciprocity, respect and responsibility, open-mindedness and critical awareness;
- and supports new and positive intercultural behaviours.
Although all these thematic elements are significant in learning to live together, three humanitarian dispositions regarding human suffering are important: to express empathy, to demonstrate respect and take responsibility. In particular, human suffering must be addressed wherever it is found, which requires an educational grounding in humanitarianism. The purpose of humanitarian action is to protect life and health and ensure respect for all humanity. Humanitarian actors must not take sides in hostilities or engage in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature. Humanitarian action must be carried out on the basis of need alone, giving priority to the most urgent cases of distress and making no distinctions on the basis of nationality, race, gender, religious belief, class or political opinions. Humanitarian action must be autonomous from the political, economic, military or other objectives that any actor may hold with regard to areas where humanitarian action is being implemented.
Humanitarianism enables individuals to interpret situations from a humanitarian perspective and empowers them to address challenges and take action in the spirit of the fundamental principles and humanitarian values of, for example, the Red Cross and Red Crescent organisations. Reasoning is a central and important thinking skill: thinkers need to be able to support conclusions with structured reasons and evidence, make informed, reasoned decisions and make valid inferences. The aim here is to evaluate science through the lens of art and reimagine how knowledge and learning can shape the future of humanity in tune with the planet. Arts reasoning is applied to explain sustainability (#aartes).
2 Learning about Agenda 2030
The 2030 Agenda was hammered out over two weeks in Paris during the United Nations 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) and adopted on December 12, 2015. It marked a historic turning point for global climate action. World leaders representing 195 nations reached a consensus on an accord that has commitments from all countries aimed at combating climate change and adapting to its impacts. The Paris Agreement could not take effect until at least 55 nations representing at least 55 percent of global carbon emissions had formally joined. This happened on October 5, 2016, and the agreement went into force 30 days later.
Fig 1 2030 Agenda pledges to be totally inclusive
Agenda 2030 also aims to strengthen countries’ ability to deal with the impacts of climate change and support them in their efforts. Like the UN Agenda 21 published in 1992 it is broad and holistic in nature, covering systemic issues such as hunger, poverty, and inequality, as well as the broader governance issues of accountability, financing, and corruption. There are seventeen sustainable development goals (‘SDGs’) which every state signatory has committed to achieving by 2030. It is the first-ever universal, legally binding, global climate change agreement. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says urgent and unprecedented changes are needed now so we do not exceed the warming target, which they say are affordable and feasible. However, 1.5C lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris agreement pledge. However, the world’s leading climate scientists have warned that time is very short to put in place mechanisms that will hold global warming at the Agenda’s agreed maximum of 1.5C. Beyond this even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.
Humanity’s grand ambition by adopting the Paris Agenda is surely to aim at an inclusive world development outcome within a stable and resilient Earth ecosystem. The dual adoption of the UN’s SDGs) together with the Paris Climate Agreement represents a global turning point in human social evolution. This human quest is to attain as many of the SDGs as possible by 2030 and then continue following a sustainable global trajectory well beyond 2030. We have never before had such a universal development plan for people and the planet. For the first time in human history the world has agreed on a democratically adopted roadmap for humanity’s future, which aims at attaining socially inclusive and highly aspirational socio-economic development goals, within globally defined environmental targets. Yet, despite this the global response to the 2030 Agenda has not been ambitious enough. Now, five years after its approval, most people think about sustainability as only related to concerns about the environment and often neglect addressing the role of students in educational discourses of sustainability. Whether or not the SDGs are achieved by 2030, young people growing up now and beyond 2030 will be living in the shadow of the Agreement’s possible political failure. In this respect, educators are failing to grasp the importance of rethinking school curricula in light of a transformational, humanistic and holistic vision of education for living sustainably. The 2030 Agenda is available to be adapted as a worldwide powerful education policy tool. It leads the way to effective, relevant learning opportunities, processes and outcomes to change the behaviours that have led us to the current potentially fatale impasse. Curricula promoting Agenda 2030 at all levels, are expected to have a positive effect as levers for the sustainable, inclusive, fair and cohesive development to achieve the SDGs and bring about human equity within a safe biosphere. From this point of view, the SDGs represent a knowledge framework to reflect and help people to construct the type of society envisioned in the Paris Agreement.
In order to strengthen the positioning of curricula toward an inclusive and equitable quality education the following questions have to be addressed:
- How can a world development curriculum be conceived?;
- What role would it play in the reforms aimed at improving equity and quality of the learning processes?;
- What are the main regional challenges in relation to curriculum development?;
- How could countries align their curricula with their development needs?
Transformative change in these directions is possible through five strategies that are powerful routes to reach most SDGs. The five practical measures are:
- accelerated renewable energy growth sufficient to halve carbon emissions every decade;
- accelerated productivity in sustainable food chains;
- new development models to enrich the poor countries;
- unprecedented inequality reduction;
- investment in education for all with regards gender equality, health and family planning.
These measures represent five “leverage points” to intervene in Earth’s globally interconnected geo-bio-socio-economic system. Together, they are capable of shifting our industrial cultural ecology onto a new steady state path in the decades ahead. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides many of the necessary signposts and guidelines to attain the vision.
The International Commission on the Futures of Education, established by UNESCO in 2019, presented nine ideas for concrete actions today that will advance education in the post COVID-19 world. They encompass the UN 2030 Agenda for sustainability, particularly Goal 4, which deals with education. We cannot return to the world as it was before.
In summary, Agenda 2030:-
- Commits to strengthen education as a common good.
Education is a bulwark against inequalities. In education as in health, we are safe when everybody is safe; we flourish when everybody flourishes.
- Expands the definition of the right to education
This is necessary so that Agenda 2030 addresses the importance of connectivity and access to knowledge and information. It calls for a global public discussion, that includes, among others, learners of all ages, about ways in which the right to education needs to be expanded.
- Values the teaching profession and teacher collaboration.
There has been remarkable innovation in the responses of educators to the COVID-19 crisis, with those systems most engaged with families and communities showing the most resilience. We must encourage conditions that give frontline educators autonomy and flexibility to act collaboratively and move from teaching fixed bodies to facilitating students to assemble personal bodies of knowledge for living in an uncertain world.
- Points to education in a post-COVID global society.
With teachers as facilitators promoting student, youth and children’s participation and rights. This is a position where intergenerational justice and democratic principles should compel us to prioritize the participation of students and young people broadly in the co-construction of desirable change.
- Protects the social spaces provided by schools as we transform education.
Traditional classroom organization must give way to a variety of ways of ‘doing school’, but the school as a separate space-time of collective living, specific and different from other spaces of learning, must be preserved.
- Makes free and open source technologies available to teachers and students.
Open educational resources and open access digital tools must be supported. Education cannot thrive with ready-made content built outside of the pedagogical space and outside of human relationships between teachers and students. Nor can education be dependent on digital platforms controlled by private companies.
- Ensures scientific literacy within the curriculum.
This is the right time for deep reflection on curriculum, particularly as we struggle against the denial of scientific knowledge and actively fight misinformation about climate change and how to respond to it.
- Protects domestic and international financing of public education.
The pandemic has the power to undermine several decades of advances. National governments, international organizations, and all education and development partners must recognize the need to strengthen public health and social services but simultaneously mobilize around the protection of public education and its financing.
- Advances global solidarity to end current levels of inequality.
COVID-19 has shown us the extent to which our societies exploit power imbalances and our global system exploits inequalities. Agenda 2030 calls for renewed commitments to international cooperation and multilateralism, together with a revitalized global solidarity that has empathy and an appreciation of our common humanity at its core. COVID-19 presents us with a real challenge and a real responsibility. These ideas invite debate, engagement and action by governments, international organizations, civil society, educational professionals, as well as learners and stakeholders at all levels.
3 Learning to become
Learning to become is a UNESCO global initiative to reimagine how learning to become a global citizen can shape the future of humanity. The vision is that knowledge and learning are humanity’s greatest renewable resources for responding to challenges and inventing alternatives. Yet, education does more than respond to a changing world. Education transforms the world. With accelerated climate change the fragility of Earth is getting more and more apparent. Persistent inequalities, social fragmentation, and political extremism are bringing many societies to a point of crisis. Advances in digital communication, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology have great potential to boost well being. But they also raise serious ethical and governance concerns, especially as promises of innovation and technological change have an uneven record of contributing to human flourishing.
The historical background to Learning to Become is the UNESCO 1972 Report; Learning to Be: the World of Education Today and Tomorrow. Forty decades later, this report, known as the Faure Report, named after former Prime Minister and Minister of Education of France, Edgar Faure, continues to influence education policy across the world. The Faure Report proposed lifelong education as the master concept for educational policies in the years to come for both developed and developing countries. It sets out a humanist vision of education and learning as a continuously renewed and evolving process throughout life. The world has changed greatly since 1972. Globalization has accelerated. There has been tremendous economic growth, but also deepening inequalities. New technologies are revolutionising the way we communicate and share information, as well as how we teach and learn. The world population is getting younger every day, and the expectations of young people are rising for quality lifelong education and sustainable jobs. Swept along with these changes, education faces new challenges of equity, quality and relevance. The world is changing; education must also change. Societies everywhere are undergoing deep transformation. New forms of education are required to foster competencies in cultural ecology for greater justice, social equity and global solidarity. In other words, the educational framework of ecosacy has to be added to reading, writing and arithmetic as a fourth guiding principle and practice for students to achieve environmental understanding. Ecosacy is about learning to live on a planet under pressure on the basis of respect and equal dignity, helping to weave together the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.
This is a humanist vision of education as an essential common good. This vision renews with the inspiration of the UNESCO Constitution, agreed 70 years ago, while also reflecting new times and demands. Today, education is key to the global integrated framework of sustainable development goals. Education is at the heart of our efforts both to adapt to change and to transform the world within which we live. A quality basic education is the necessary foundation for learning throughout life in a complex and rapidly changing global environment. The world must abandon the 19th century curriculum that was designed for building empires and promoting white supremacy.
A report on financing third world development (the Addis Ababa Action Agenda July 2015) revealed that many countries, particularly developing countries, still faced considerable challenges to adopting the SDGs, and some had fallen further behind. Also, inequalities within many countries had recently increased dramatically. Women, representing half of the world’s population, as well as indigenous peoples and the vulnerable, continue to be excluded from participating fully in the economy. Against this background, achieving the 2030 SDGs seems to some ‘like a sleepless dream’. However, we should be taking the 2030 Agenda, and its precursor, Agenda 21, as a whole, not just the chapter on 2030 SDGs. If the SDGs point to the pathway for achieving the 2030 Agenda, the means of implementation are the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and, where relevant, the Paris Agreement). These have provided the knowledge framework for curriculum development and measuring progress.
Many believe that too much emphasis has been placed on developing a green economy when we know that a sustainable lifestyle has also to be based on social inclusion. This means improving the terms on which individuals and groups take part in society, so augmenting the ability, opportunity, and dignity of those disadvantaged on the basis of their identity. The elements of social improvement are included in Agenda 2030 where they are integral to the creation of a knowledge framework for learning to live sustainably.
The environmental vision is an Earth free of poverty, hunger, disease and want, where all life can thrive without fear and violence; a world with universal literacy; a world with equitable and universal access to quality education at all levels; a world committed to free health care and social protection, where physical, mental and social well-being are assured. This future world reaffirms national commitments regarding the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, where there is improved hygiene and where food is sufficient, safe, affordable and nutritious. This is a world where human habitats are safe, resilient and sustainable and where there is universal access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy; a world in which every country enjoys a sustainable economy and decent work for all; a world in which consumption and production patterns and use of all natural resources, from air to land, from rivers, lakes and aquifers to oceans and seas, are sustainable; a world in which humanity lives in harmony with nature, under good governance.
The human rights vision is a world of universal respect for human rights and human dignity, the rule of law, justice, equality and non-discrimination; of respect for race, ethnicity and cultural diversity; and of equal opportunity permitting the full realization of human potential and contributing to shared prosperity. This is a world which invests in its children, where every child grows up free from violence and exploitation; a world in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality and all legal, social and economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed. It is also a world where the knowledge framework is just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive, where the needs of the most vulnerable are met.
A knowledge framework is a device for exploring and linking distinct areas of knowledge. It identifies the key characteristics of each area by depicting it as a complex system of interacting components, which together, answer the following questions.
- What is the area of knowledge about?
- What practical problems can be solved through applying this knowledge?
- What makes this area of knowledge important?
- What are the current open questions in this area—important questions that are currently unanswered?
- Are there ethical considerations that limit the scope of inquiry? If so, what are they?
‘Leaving no one behind’ lies at the operational heart of the 2030 Agenda. This principle is mentioned at least seven times in the Agenda itself, and has been a recurrent theme in documents, pledges, call to actions, interventions and statements delivered since by Member States, the UN and civil society. A clear commitment to inclusiveness is made in the text of the Agenda when Member States “pledge that no one will be left behind” while at the same time recognizing that the dignity of the human person is fundamental, and by pledging that all goals and targets be met for all nations, peoples and societies, committing to also reach those furthest behind . However, in spite of the frequent use and reference to this principle, focused efforts to leave no one behind remain insufficient, in terms of policy design, implementation and review. But only 14% of survey respondents regarded the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups as being included in national reviews. Empowering people to ensure inclusiveness and equality is an ongoing and difficult task, but it is also an opportunity to take concrete, collective and focused actions to ensure that the pledge of leaving no one behind indeed includes every person everywhere as well as to review progress and challenges in realizing it is a core principle.
Inclusiveness, equality and equity are not just issues for developing countries. Though marginalization and vulnerability take different forms in different countries, and different groups are left behind in different contexts, the presence of these groups and individuals is universal and constant. Reducing these local disparities must be elevated as a priority. Furthermore, inclusiveness and equality are global, not only national matters. The significant gaps between developed and developing countries persist and even widen. We should not forget that whole countries can be ‘left behind’.
Ensuring inclusiveness, equality and equity means approaching the SDGs in an integrated manner. The realization of one of the goals will not be possible if progress across the other SDGs is not also ensured. Inclusiveness, equality or empowerment will never be possible unless its the root causes are addressed. These lie beneath exclusion and poverty, guaranteeing food and nutrition security, ensuring access to quality and equitable education and lifelong learning, universal health coverage, as well as fighting climate change by protecting the environment, its goods, services and resources. We need to ensure that empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality also promotes development and protects the environment.
‘Learning to Become’ has been adopted as a mindmap by International Classrooms On Line. The map (Fig 2) is being developed as a knowledge framework for a four-stranded curriculum at all levels to reimagine how knowledge and learning can shape the future of humanity and the planet. The future of Learning to Become is to help change human behaviour to live equitably in a sufficient economy, not consuming Earth’s natural resources faster than they can be regenerated. The objective of this ‘action-curriculum’ is to guide people to behave sustainably through becoming more inclusive, more global, more green, more adversarial and more political. Of overwhelming importance will be the management and direction taken by a new economics for the post Corvid-19 era in the context of Agenda 2030.
Fig 2 A themed curriculum for belonging: place and change.
https://mm.tt/1568562629?t=S8kyP6pkXe
Behavioral change is focused on five topics that together define inclusivity as a body of knowledge. namely world views, societal views, interpersonal views and individual views, which are defined as follows;
It is important to regard all SDGs as global public goods for which costs as well as figures on interlinkages should be published. OECD countries and donors should move away from the practice of setting unilateral agendas or commitments focused only on a few SDGs.
The outcomes of Learning to Become are:
-for people:- The end of poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions, and to ensure that all human beings can fulfil their potential in dignity and equality and in a healthy environment.
-for planet:- to protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change, so that it can support the needs of the present and future generations.
-for prosperity:- to ensure that all human beings can enjoy prosperous and fulfilling lives and that economic, social and technological progress occurs in harmony with nature.
-for peace:- to foster peaceful, just and inclusive societies, which are free from fear and violence. There can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development.
-for partnership:- to mobilize the means required to implement Agenda 2030 through a revitalised global partnership for sustainable development, based on a spirit of strengthened global solidarity, focussed in particular on the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable and with the participation of all countries, all stakeholders and all people.
To confront the crises and challenges of learning to behave sustainably, their root causes must be addressed by promoting and defending a shared spirit of human solidarity that takes many forms, the simplest of which is friendship.
5 Learning for Intercultural understanding
Crossing cultural boundaries can reveal other ways of seeing what is worth knowing and teaching, but can also reveal how pedagogy and, indeed, a whole world curriculum, should be understood and adopted. Comparative education is needed today where we find ourselves poised between the educational legacy of capitalist modernity and a radically new steady state global order. Social, economic, political and technological changes are combining to produce new educational challenges and opportunities. Such challenges and opportunities for comparative education, as a field of study, call for learning to be liberated from the constraints of formal educational institutions. It can be argued that schools have evolved to a point in their pedagogies where they curb both young people’s innate love of learning and their capacity to manage and direct their own educational experiences effectively in the light of their developing individual needs and interests. An oft cited example is the Barbiana School in Italy, in which the conventional curriculum was abandoned and teachers no longer taught formal lessons, yet pupils learned with a depth and commitment hitherto unparalleled in this rural village.
The major international educational boundary is between East and West, exemplified by India, where it can be argued that the long development of Indian culture has rooted education in the East’s Dharmic thought-banks (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Gandhian,
etc.) where the world is governed by primordial consciousness. Consciousness refers to an individual’s awareness of their unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, and environments. Essentially, consciousness is awareness of self and the world around yourself. This awareness is subjective and unique to you. If you can describe something you are experiencing in words, then it is part of your consciousness. The crisis humanity is facing is, in essence, a crisis of consciousness; a crisis of perception and values. It is becoming increasingly clear that the dominating materialist values of efficiency and economy need to be balanced by the equally important values of care, compassion and respect.
In Hindu culture the quest for primordial consciousness is represented by the Gita, which appears as a central chapter in the Mahabharata, the mythical history of greater India. It is the essence of Vedic knowledge and one of the most important books of Vedic literature. Bhagavad-Gita is a conversation between Arjuna, a supernaturally gifted warrior about to go into battle, and Krishna, his charioteer. In the course of giving Arjuna all manner of spiritual and material advice, Krishna explains how our environment affects our consciousness, and how to attain the perfection of life. In this connection, the Gita talks at length about the “three modes of material nature.” These are subtle social forces that influence our behavior as well as every aspect of our physical, mental, and emotional world. The Sanskrit term for this collection of forces is guna, meaning “rope,” and the Gita explains how they pull us to act in various ways, even against our better judgment.
The behavioural effects of Sattva-guna, the mode of goodness, are seen when an atmosphere of peace, serenity, and harmony prevails in our environment and ourselves. Rajo-guna, the mode of passion, is felt as an insatiable desire for temporary things, striving for more and more of them, and perpetual dissatisfaction. Tamo-guna, is the mode of ignorance. The fourteenth chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita contains elaborate descriptions of these modes of material nature, their characteristics, how they affect us, and ultimately how to become free from their influence through the practice of bhakti-yoga, or, in a modern context, by creating an inclusive curriculum for achieving Krishna consciousness. In comparative education the significance of the gunas is that they provide Eastern students with a learning pathway embedded in Hinduism for a progressive behavioural change from Tamo-guna to Rajo-guna on to Sattva-guna. This can be the backdrop to progress reinforcing a personal goal of Agenda 2030. That is to say, we have to move from ignorance of who we are via consumerism to a steady state economy. Krishna missionaries say that without Krishna consciousness, “we try to enjoy life through the body and mind, with hit-or-miss results. And we fear death since we don’t know what happens afterwards”.
In her paper, ‘Religiously motivated conservation as a response to pilgrimage pressures in
Vrindavan’, Tamara Luthy examines Govardhan, a sacred hill in Uttar Pradesh. It is close to the urban centre of Vrindavan. According to local lore and religious texts it is the location of numerous sacred groves. It is one of many such areas that are circumambulated by pilgrims every year. Small signs designating each sacred grove on the route provide a sense of connecting with the sacred geography described in the scriptures. Some of these groves are groves in name only; others still show lush vegetation. Some bear little resemblance to their scriptural namesakes. Yet, just as in the scriptures, cowherds still continue to tend to their animals grazing in the fields between groves.
Fig 3 Lord Krishna and the cowgirl Radha meet each other secretly on Govardhan Hill
Places of pilgrimage in India often experience environmental degradation as a result of pilgrimage pressures. They are not examples of ‘traditional land management systems’ that are struggling to adapt to the ‘new’ phenomena of pilgrimage. Instead, they represent contemporary management systems targeting the elements of sacred geography, which are being compromised by the pilgrims’ needs to ‘see for themselves’. This kind of conservation management system is an expression of a growing eco-conscious movement which was first articulated in the 1970s. Eco-conscience is a broad term that means “marked by or showing concern for the environment.” There are many different ways people can make changes to conserve their environment, and the term ‘environmentally conscious’ now defines a fundamental belief system. In the context of Vrindavan, sacred groves link a mythologized sacred geography (Fig3) to modern-day issues of desertification and environmental degradation, which are facing this religious tourism site in a way that has become a political issue. Luthy suggests that activists and devotees alike are beginning to rally around an image of ‘Krishna as an Environmental Deity’ in a move to create new conservation management regimes.These discourses involve negotiations of new understandings of place and usage, which are endeavoring to attract the attention of extra-local agencies and engage them in new alliances to save the sacred landscape. Friends of Vrindavan are dedicated to bringing about a renaissance of nature and culture in and around Vrindavan.
6 Learning by invitation
Few students are drawn to lists of facts. Not many find computations, theorems, and proofs inherently interesting. Worksheets evoke little satisfaction in the young. The impetus to learn generally does not come first from content itself, but rather because a teacher has learned to make the content inviting.
What invites students to learn? Because students vary, what is inviting will vary as well. In general, however, students have at least five needs that teachers can address to make learning irresistible: affirmation, contribution, purpose, power, and challenge. Sometimes, teachers find that the learning environment is key to meeting student needs. Sometimes the mode of instruction is key. Generally, environment and instruction work in tandem to invite, inspire, and sustain student learning. Approaching acting to live sustainably through spiritual consciousness of environment and instruction make the content practically important.
For those who are educated to be aware of current environmental issues, self-efficacy is an important barrier to action, where individuals often feel powerless in achieving large goals such as mitigating global climate change. Moreover, lack of motivation to change one’s behaviour is correlated with the belief that individuals are incapable of performing effective large scale pro-environmental actions.
Martin Haigh believes that it is important to design effective learning invitations, which encourage a learner to engage and overcome inhibitions that may hold them back from assembling and applying environmental knowledge. To this end he introduces five styles of learning invitation based on an individual’s classroom mindset and explores how they may be employed to lever positive educational outcomes. The mindset to learn is established by questioning the learning environment. These questions may be used to evaluate a classroom and act as performance indicators of an individual’s progress as a learner.
1 Affirmation
Many young people seek first an affirmation that they are significant in the classroom. Perhaps more and more young people are uncertain of their significance in the world at large, or perhaps the young have always been on a quest for significance. Whatever the reason, students in school need to have affirmative answers to the following questions:
- Am I accepted and acceptable here just as I am?
- Am I safe here; physically, emotionally, and intellectually?
- Do people here care about me?
- Do people here listen to me?
- Do people know how I’m doing, and does it matter to them that I do well?
- Do people acknowledge my interests and perspectives and act upon them?
2 Contribution
To make a difference in any sort of community, one must contribute. Many students come to school looking for a way to contribute to their world. They need to to know:
- They can make a difference in the classroom?
- They can bring unique and valuable perspectives and abilities to the classroom?
- They can help other students and the entire class to succeed?
- They can connect to others through mutual work on common goals?
3 Purpose
Students come to school in search of collective purposes. They need answers to the following questions:
Do I understand what we do here?
- Do I see significance in what we do?
- Does what we do reflect me and my world?
- Does the work we do make a difference in the world?
- Will the work absorb me as an individual?
4 Power
From infancy, the young seek increasing dominion over their world. Turning over in the crib, learning to open the refrigerator door, crossing the street, deciding what to wear to school, and spending the night at a friend’s house are important milestones, in part because they signal growing independence and power. Teachers who purposefully assist young learners to develop a sense of power invite their students to learn. To feel powerful in the classroom, students need affirmative answers to the following questions:
- Will what I learn here be useful to me now?
- Will I be able to make choices that contribute to my success?
- Do I know what quality looks like and how I will be able to create quality work here?
- Does dependable support for my journey exist in this classroom?
5 Challenge
Something deep inside humans seeks challenge despite fears. Students feel they will be challenged in the classroom when they have positive answers to the following questions:
- Will the work here complement my ability?
- Will the work stretch me?
- Will I be able to work hard in this classroom?
- If I work hard will I generally succeed?
- Will I be able to be accountable for my own growth, and contribute to the growth of others.?
- Will I be able to accomplish things here that I didn’t believe were possible?
Levers of learning engage the three modes of nature (the guṇas) as evoked by Satish Kumar’s “Spiritual Compass.” The leverage aims to raise learners away from the mode of inertia and darkness (tamas), toward compassion, peace, and clear-sightedness (sattva),
typically, via the fire of action (rajas). The value of the tamas mode is as a motivation and
fulcrum for change and the problems that develop when rajas (i.e., action) becomes
both the way and the goal. So are the limitations of sattva, goodness, which while it may be holistic, reflective and serene, needs help (the rajas) to convert its dreaming into reality. Haigh says, using the approach would help internationalise educational curricula and shift education’s current focus from “Doing” (rajas) to “Being” (sattva).
Vrindavan is not just another town on the map. It is Krishna’s abode and a powerful centre of spiritual consciousness. If here, at such a sacred place, the balance of nature is under threat, what does this signify for the well-being of the rest of the planet? On the other hand, if Vrindavan’s woodlands and wildlife flourish once again, then a message of hope will be sent to all of India and to the world that it is possible to bring human demands on the environment in line with Earth’s limited productivity. Preserving a pastoral landscape of the mind is a good example of the application of arts reasoning to explain sustainability.
7 Internet references
Design and management proposals for Govardhan Hill
What Is Invitational Learning?