Today I took part in a fascinating dialog about the future of higher education. We met at the headquarters of WASC, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Sixteen of us conversed about how to revive education. How to make it more human? What to make it relevant? Higher ed doesn’t know how to learn about itself. We’re educating people for a world that’s not there. I suggested coupling a feedback loop to academia.
Anthropocene? It means we have reached the tipping point where people have more influence on the planet than nature. Now we need to build earth empathy. And we’re not sure what else. We are in deep doo-doo, and higher education is not helping us pull out.
The pilgrims and pioneers changed the ecosystem of the American continent. We live in a manipulated, manufactured, unnatural environment. Imagine Paul Bunyan chopping down trees and Johnny Appleseed planting new (non-indigenous) ones. We don’t have a clue how to back out of what we’ve done. Environmental scientists are by and large technocrats who miss the ethical issues. When people say sustainable, they usually mean sustaining what we already have: it won’t work.
A big ah-ha for me: education should help people be activists, not bystanders.
My breakout group focused on the curriculum of the future.
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Makes me want to read Michael Newman’s new book, “Teaching Defiance: Stories and Strategies for Activist Educators”.