Education for Well-being Education as if people and the planet mattered

“To some, such a response to the challenges of the 21st century appears to be utterly unimaginable. To others, however, it looks a great deal like what Winston Churchill once called an “insurmountable opportunity.” It is an opportunity to revitalize and enliven curriculum and pedagogy. It is an opportunity to create a genuinely interdisciplinary curriculum. It is an opportunity to redesign the campus to reduce costs, lower environmental impacts, and help catalyze sustainable economies. In fact a revolution in education is gathering momentum. It is apparent in the conferences sponsored by the Student Environmental Action Coalition that have drawn thousands of students from campuses all over the United States . It was evident in the February 1994 conference sponsored by Yale University students who organized the “Campus Earth Summit.” It is evident in the rapid growth of environmental studies programs on campuses virtually everywhere. It is evident in growing student enrollments in environmental studies courses and participation in campus environmental projects. Increasingly, students realize that their inheritance is being spent carelessly and sometimes fraudulently. But a sizable number know in their bones the truth of Goethe’s words that “whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it, Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

David W. Orr (from Educating for the environment; higher education’s challenge of the next century)