1 - Choosing the future

Summary

In this opening chapter, I attempt to trace and summarize patterns of change in the relationship between our times and the role of education and learning in contributing towards a safer future. It touches on how humanity and the planet have come to the current precarious state; outlines the paradox that so much education prepares people for their future whilst omitting the global context which will shape that future; presents the analysis that society faces an urgent choice between two pathways based on current scenarios; and argues that rapid progress towards a “Great Transition” and “Preferable Future” depends on a shift of culture and thinking towards an ecological basis and planetary consciousness.

You cannot learn without changing, or change without learning.

Kosko (1994).

LEARNING AND CHANGE

The above proposition about learning and change could not be more relevant to our times. It lies at the heart of this book. In the Anthropocene age, the fundamental issue is whether or not humanity can change sufficiently to assure its future, and that of its biospheric planetary home. To do so requires deep learning, urgently and on a global scale.

Starting around a half-century ago, there have been increasingly frequent and insistent calls that transformative social change is necessary if we are to avert a chaotic future; if we are to achieve a path towards a secure and stable world. Mounting high-level reports (e.g. IPCC 2022a; UNEP 2022; WWF 2022; WEF 2023) reinforce the message that now is the time; an historic reckoning which demands an urgent and commensurate response.

Concern is growing rapidly, with the result that research is increasingly realigning and focussing on issues and possible answers, while pressure for policy re-thinking is mounting across sectors. A recent survey amongst people across G20 countries shows that 74 per cent of respondents are concerned and want to “prioritise well-being, health and protection of the planet over a singular focus on profit and economic growth” (Dixson-Declève et al. 2022), whilst a 2021 European Union survey of opinion in EU countries indicates that “93 per cent of people surveyed consider climate change to be a serious problem with 78 per cent considering it to be very serious”. A shift is occurring, albeit slow and partial – not least given entrenchment and resistance by interests vested in the norms of “business as usual” (often abbreviated to BAU).