文档介绍：Education for Sustainability: some guidelines for curriculum reform
John Huckle
South Bank University
For over thirty years we have been developing the theory and practice of environmental education and governments and non anisations have invested heavily in its application. Despite this investment, the global environmental crisis continues to worsen. Many people’s environmental knowledge and awareness have improved but such gains are rarely reflected in more environmentally sound behaviour. This paper suggests that the failure of environmental education is due to the assumptions that have guided the development and application of its dominant forms. It begins by considering the global crisis of the environment and development and the emergence of education for sustainability as a more effective vehicle for realising the aims of environmental education.
A global crisis of the environment and development
Modern economic development has brought considerable benefits for many of the world’s people: greater life expectancy, more gender and racial equality, more consumer choice, and some extension of human rights and political freedoms. These benefits are not to be discounted but they are unequally shared and are associated with such mounting costs as ecological degradation, economic instability, social exclusion, loss of cultural diversity, and psychological insecurity. In varying ways, and to varying extents, most of the world’s people are living in ways that are ecologically, economically, socially, culturally and personally unsustainable. Evidence that they are living in ways that cannot last is found in three recent reports.
The Human Development Report ( p/hdro ) from the United Nations states that global inequalities are worsening. Twenty per cent of the global population accounts for eighty six per cent of global consumption and one billion people have been left out of the consumption boom of the past two decades. Consumption has increased sixfold in the l