Thursday, May 14, 2009

Sustainability in Education

President's Climate Commitment


I really like this wording.
We currently view health,
social, economic, political, security, population, environmental, and other major societal issues as
separate, competing, and hierarchical when they are really systemic and interdependent. The current
educational system is largely reinforcing the current unhealthy, inequitable and unsustainable path that
society is pursuing. This is not intentional – it is because of disciplinary predominance and an implicit
assumption that the earth will be the gift that keeps on giving, providing the resources, assimilating our
wastes and mitigating negative impacts, ad infinitum. Twenty‐first century challenges must be
addressed in a systemic, integrated, and holistic fashion.


Implementing an integrated education is really difficult, though, and some classes that have attempted to do that have been cheesy. I am even skeptical of having a sustainability major since I do not want it to erode the rigor of a normal technical class.

Main ideas from the guide are to
1. have partnerships with the local community.
2. lateral vigor acress disciplines in addition to vertical rigor within them

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