Environment, sustainability and futures

10 Environment, sustainability and futures

To many geography teachers the conceptual contents of this chapter go to the real, sub- stantial core of the subject in schools. If sustainable development rests on the three pillars of economic security, social justice and environmental quality, then pretty well the same case can

be made for geography. Geography, particularly in education, often claims its strength is in ‘unifying’ the physical and the human worlds, or ‘synthesizing’ the environmental and social realms. In one sense this chapter provides substance to those claims by carefully unpacking the ideas such as nature and environment and showing the origins of ‘social nature’. The chapter refuses to accept too easily the part that ‘sustainable development’ (an idea identified as ‘key’ to school geography in the state National Curriculum) can play to guide or even rejuvenate geography with a renewed sense of purpose. Instead, we argue that the idea is very difficult to use in the classroom, and we contend that what geographical study may bring is some critical distance to it. Interestingly, the QCA’s 2009 guidance on Sustainable Development, a com- panion booklet to the 2007 QCA guidance on the Global Dimension, has surprisingly little geography in it. This does not mean, of course, that brilliant work is not possible in geography classrooms, as this chapter goes on the argue – using the language of environment critically with young people and encouraging futures thinking with them.

Introduction: ethical and political perspectives

The key point is this: the skills, aptitudes and attitudes that were necessary to industrialise the Earth are not the same as those that are needed now to heal the Earth, or to build durable economies and good communities.

(Orr 1999a: 232) In this chapter we are going to explore the small constellation of concepts that often

become conflated to become the complex idea of sustainable development, as has hap- pened in the list of ‘key concepts’ in the 2008 National Curriculum revised geography programme (QCA 2008). Thus, we see in the QCA’s guidance publication:

Identified as one of the key concepts in the geography national curriculum, ‘environmental interaction and sustainable development’, geography teachers can be expected to take on and develop their teaching schemes accordingly. For example, through their geography lessons pupils will:

develop their understanding of climate, and use this knowledge to ana- lyse the evidence of current climate change and projections for the future;

study how a growing economy in the UK and, for example, the rapid

134 RECONSTRUCTING CONCEPTS economic growth of India and China place pressure on sustainable use of

resources;

analyse global patterns of population growth and resource use and within the context of globalization consider the challenge of sustainable devel- opment at the national and international scales;

investigate first hand their neighbourhood’s environmental quality and consider the social and economic factors that effect its quality and the actions necessary to improve it.

(QCA 2009) The widespread ‘endorsement’ of sustainable development – in the National Curriculum

itself, by the government’s curriculum agency and by the leaders of the UK’s leading organizations for geography – is essentially a political act. Thus, taking each in turn:

The government of the day want to harness the publicly funded education system to help service the political goal of providing information and hopefully influ- encing public opinion (the Secretary of State at the time of the launch of the new curriculum was quite explicit about this, that young people would be in a position to influence their parents’ thinking and behaviour in relation to their carbon footprints).

The QCA on the other hand, see sustainable development (and related ideas such

a global dimension) as unifying big ideas or grand themes to provide some ‘coherence’ and applied relevance to the school curriculum.

The GA, representing school geography as a subject discipline, have a felt need to express the contribution that geography is able to make to the understanding of the idea (e.g. Grimwade et al. 2000) – including, as we shall see more extensively in this chapter, a critical awareness of its limits and potentials.

None of these political motives need be seen cynically, although each in its way demonstrates attempts at strategic thinking and intervention. If you agree with the prominent environmentalist, David Orr, in the opening quotation, then you might welcome the adoption of sustainable development as a key idea, because you may see the potential for unsettling and perhaps breaking up the hold that ‘traditional’ (and Western) subject knowledge has on the school curriculum – and on which Orr heaps blame:

Towards the natural world, this education system, like that which produced the butchers of the Holocaust, emphasises theories, not values; abstraction rather than consciousness; neat answers instead of questions; and technical efficiency over conscience.

(Orr 1999b: 166) On the other hand, you may have a different view. Standish (2009) for example is

deeply suspicious of the position adopted by Orr and others who embrace the ‘ethical turn’ in education whereby ‘values’ usurp ‘knowledge and understanding’. The ethical curriculum, he argues, is ‘designed entirely’ (p. 41) to engage young people in a focus on their own personal response to – and responsibility for resolving – environmental crises

ENVIRONMENT, SUSTAINABILITY AND FUTURES 135 or following Al Gore’s lead, the ‘planetary emergency’ (Gore 2006). Standish is highly

critical therefore of the geography curriculum being utilized for political purposes. Drawing on Marsden’s analyses in the 1990s, which showed how rigorous disciplined enquiry can be lost when education processes and/or social purposes dominate (Marsden 1997), and bolstered by the Civitas critique that talked about the ‘corruption of the curriculum’ (Whelan 2007), Standish explains that:

. . . beneath the rhetoric of empowerment, social justice, citizenship education and personal transformation lies a strong moral imperative with authoritarian consequences. The new ethical geography may superficially present itself as more enlightened and considerate of non-Western cultures than previous cur- ricula with their Western-centrism, yet behind this veil of tolerance lies a new intolerance. The new ethical geography curriculum does not allow young people to develop their own moral compass; instead the issues and questions presented to students are designed to reinforce some strong contemporary moral messages. These are based around the ideas of environmentalism (etc).

(Standish 2009: 40) The purpose of this chapter is not to adjudicate between these positions. We

acknowledge from the start that these are fundamental issues that have their resolution in what we think education itself is for – a discussion that lies beyond the scope of this book. However, neither can we ignore these debates. As with ‘diversity’ and ‘cultural cohesion’ (Chapter 9), when it comes to ‘sustainable development’ school geography has an inescapable contribution to make. Indeed, geography as a school subject has for at least 30 years more or less adopted the study of ‘economic development’ (see Chapter 8) and ‘environment’ into its mainstream. The question that interests us here is how ‘carefully’ the subject has managed to integrate these ideas (see Morgan and Lambert 2005: 157-8, 62–5 for a discussion of ‘moral carelessness’ in geography teaching), including sustainable development. To do this, we need to examine the ideas themselves, especially how they continue to evolve and change as academics shed new light and produce new ways to see.

Not least, and notwithstanding Standish’s observations, we emphasize that the ‘ethical turn’ in geography is of enormous significance. While sympathetic to some of the warnings sounded by Standish and aware of the dangers of ‘careless’ teaching, one of the main arguments we make is that teachers of geography in schools today need to take into account the role of values, ethics and morality: it is an historical shift. One of the major developments in geography in recent years is the realization that knowledge production is neither neutral nor value-free (e.g. Castree 2005; Kobayashi and Proctor 2003; Proctor and Smith 1999). When we teach geography in schools, therefore, we are to a greater or lesser degree inducting young people into ways of knowledge-making, not a given or predetermined window on the world. Teaching geography well is careful not to provide a

moral code or right and wrong ‘that encourages them to consume less, have fewer children, take public transport rather than drive cars, be less money grabbing, support charities and so forth’ (Standish 2009: 41), for that is not a moral education (it is more like indoctrination). Moral education ‘is concerned with the ways in which individuals and groups make judgements about right and wrong. This is not (about) teaching what is

136 RECONSTRUCTING CONCEPTS right or wrong but how to make worthwhile distinctions’ (Morgan and Lambert 2005: 154,

our emphasis). Geography is a discipline and a body of knowledge, therefore, that tea- chers can use and engage with as a resource to contribute to this goal. Clarifying the conceptual landscape, which this book attempts to do, makes a crucial contribution to this task.