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

This is a post that was originally published on Clay Burell’s must-read blog Beyond-School. Thanks again to Clay for giving me the chance to guest post and for all he has done and continues to do to make education all that it can be.

A couple of summers ago I stumbled across an article having to do with well-being called the Happy Planet Index. The HPI ranks countries according to how ecologically efficient each is at delivering well-being to its citizens. It was interesting to see the country where I was born, Colombia, ranked number two out of 178, Honduras, were I once lived, ranked 7, the country where I currently live, the Dominican Republic, ranked 27, and I was unsurprised to see the USA ranked at 150. My experiences overseas, in countries considered poor, confirmed to me what was in the report: nations where people have more stuff and are able to hire more services, don’t necessarily produce more well-being for their citizens. The well-being that wealthy countries do produce comes at a high price to the planet.

This made me reflect again on the current state of education: Why are we subjecting kids to an educational system that, for too many, dulls the senses, erodes natural curiosity, and forces kids to choose grades over learning, all in the quest for a high-paying job that will not necessarily make them happier or healthier? If someone wanted to create a system to reduce well-being for all, they need look no further than the current educational approach found in most schools. Losses pile up, one on the other, as first students have to endure, instead of enjoy school. Consequently, their ability to learn is diminished as inquisitiveness is all but extinguished. Finally, having never been adequately equipped to appreciate or care for their natural world, they will diminish their chances of living well on a planet with a finite biosphere. To quote David Orr, “Students are fed through a conveyor belt of requirements, large classes, deadlines, and general busy-ness. What they learn seldom ads up to anything like a coherent, ecologically solvent worldview.”

But of course, there are many opinions about the ultimate purpose of education. Mine is just one against the many other louder voices politicking for higher standards and harder work in the name of job protection. While economic well-being is certainly important, to think of it without considering how it interacts with, and is dependent on social and environmental well-being, is to deny the importance of people and places as sources of both happiness and prosperity. One of the main goals of Ed4Wb then, is to try to get more people thinking about the direction of education and to help education live up to its potential as an agent of good change. I believe that, despite all the talk about wanting to produce critical thinkers, education has done very little to expose students to critical thought or to world views that are not in the mainstream. Most textbooks for example, are produced by large corporations, who by their very nature have an obligation to benefit their shareholders, not the students. Expecting these companies to publish anything that challenges the status quo in which they profit, is simply unrealistic.

Below, with the help of interested people, are just some ideas that Ed4Wb would like to advance:

• Counter the idea that school, in order to be effective, must be hard, painful work for the student. I realize that probably most people reading this here believe school should be enjoyable. However, I’m guessing we’ve all met too many educators, parents and policymakers who believe medicine must taste bad in order for it to work. Unhappily, for too many it’s hard to understand that education is a remedy that works best when sweet.
• Debunk the belief that people have to choose between the economy and the planet. As the authors of Natural Capitalism remind us, “The environment is not a minor factor of production but rather is an envelope containing, provisioning, and sustaining the entire economy.” We would be wise then, to teach our kids how to protect their ultimate source of economic well-being.
  There is plenty of innovative thinking happening right now that demonstrates how acting green not only is profitable in the long term, but also in the short term, often beating returns on investments from capital markets, without the downside risks, all the while improving the environment. Why invest your money in stocks like gold mining corporations that will degrade the environment when instead, you could invest your money in items like efficient appliances, solar water heaters (or in companies that make them) which will not only improve the environment, but also give you great, risk-free returns?
  The incredible amount of waste in modern society presents huge opportunities for wealth creation while at the same time increasing the habitability of the planet. Paul Hawken points out, “That inefficiency is masked because growth and progress are measured in money, and money does not give us information about ecological systems, it only gives information about financial systems.”
• Discredit current economic doctrine: “For all their power and vitality, markets are only tools. They make a good servant but a bad master and a worse religion. This theology treats living things as dead, nature as a nuisance, several billion years’ design experience as casually discardable, and the future as worthless.” (Authors, Natural Capitalism) We would do well to expose our students to innovative thinking like that found at New Economics Foundation whose motto is: economics as if people and the planet mattered. “Education as if people and the planet mattered” is Ed4Wb’s principal message.
• Put forward the idea that most of our biggest problems aren’t due to lack of technology, lack of resources, lack of knowledge or lack of intelligence, but instead, are due to lack of congruence with what it is we are told to believe and with the way a planet with a finite biosphere actually functions. We are taught, through a half trillion dollar a year industry called advertising, to value that which isn’t needed at the expense of that which is. There is an uncritical acceptance of the belief that economies can grow indefinitely within a finite biosphere. At some point, we’ll have to start wondering if more, faster and bigger is really progress. Do we really need another artificial island off the coast of Dubai?
• Promote the idea of nature as a teacher. Help eliminate the arrogant posture that what we humans create outshines what nature produces. We’re proud of our Kevlar, iron and plastics. However, we don’t mention too loudly that we require huge energy inputs and various toxins to heat, beat and treat these materials into existence. Nature makes materials that are just as effective, if not more so, using very little energy at low temperatures, all the while, improving the environment where they are made. 3.8 billion years of trial and error could teach us something.
• (The following idea was put forth by David Orr in his book Earth in Mind but has not been carried out yet.) Create, through a Wikipedia-like / sourceforge.net combination (you!) a ratings system to rank and rate schools according to how much well-being they produce. The school ratings available today (i.e. US News and World Report) push an agenda of speed, elitism, testing, and consumerism, while in the process, stressing kids out and diminishing the kind of learning that will serve them and their planet. Something else is sorely needed that will give students better information while also acting as an agent to promote better education. The ratings would look at how ecologically responsible a school is in its daily operations, how beneficial its curriculum is at promoting wellness, how healthy and happy its students are while attending school, and finally, it would look at what kind of life work is produced by its graduates.

Changing institutions is never easy. However, I believe it’s worth trying. I also believe there are two important factors that should help us consider whether to act or not: 1) We are seriously messing with our chances to live well on this planet. Our numbers are huge. Our desires are infinite. Our ability to physically alter our biosphere is unprecedented. Our institutions of production and marketing are out of control. Actually, they are in control and answer to no one. 2) In a world of del.icio.us, Google, YouTube, Wikis, Nings, e-mail, blogs, Skype…information finally has a chance. Call me naïve.

“Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could do only a little.” Edmund Burke

I would love to hear your idea. Thanks for reading. Be well. Bill Farren