Immortalizing Values Through Education for Sustainable Development

Education is the primary agent of transformation towards sustainable development, increasing people’s capacities to transform their visions for society into reality. Education provides scientific and technical skills and the motivation and social support for pursuing and applying them. For this reason, organizations must be deeply concerned that much of current education falls far short of what is required. When we say this, it reflects the necessities across cultures that allow everyone to become responsible for quality enhancement. Improving the quality and revelation of education and reorienting its goals to recognize the importance of sustainable development must be among society’s highest priorities. It is not that we talk only about the environment but also about every component of life, Darbi.

We, therefore, need to clarify the concept of education for sustainable development. It was a major challenge for educators during the last decade. The meanings of sustainable development in educational setups, the appropriate balance of peace, human rights, citizenship, social equity, ecological and development themes in already overloaded curricula, and ways of integrating the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts into what had up-to-now been seen and practiced as a branch of science education.

Some argued that educating for sustainable development ran the risk of programming. In contrast, others wondered whether asking schools to lead the transition to sustainable development was asking too many teachers. These debates were compounded by the desire of many, predominantly environmental, NGOs to contribute to educational planning without the requisite understanding of how education systems work, educational change and innovation, and relevant curriculum development, professional development, and instructive values. Not realizing that effective educational change takes time, others were critical of governments not acting more quickly.

Education

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Consequently, many international, regional, and national initiatives have contributed to an expanded and refined understanding of the meaning of education for sustainable development. For example, Education International, the major umbrella group of teachers’ unions and associations globally, has issued a declaration and action plan to promote sustainable development through education.

A common agenda in all these is the need for an integrated approach through which all communities, and government entities, collaborate to develop a shared understanding of and commitment to policies, strategies, and education programs for sustainable development. Actively promoting the integration of education into sustainable development in the local community. In addition, many individual governments have established committees, panels, advisory councils, and curriculum development projects to discuss education for sustainable development, develop policy and appropriate support structures, programs, and resources, and fund local initiatives.

Indeed, the roots of education for sustainable development are firmly planted in the environmental education efforts of such groups. Along with global education, development education, peace education, citizenship education, human rights education, and multicultural and anti-racist education have all been significant, environmental education has been particularly substantial. In its brief thirty-year history, contemporary environmental education has steadily striven towards goals and outcomes similar and comparable to those inherent in the concept of sustainability.

A New Vision for Education

These many initiatives illustrate that the international community now strongly believes that we must foster – through education – the values, behavior, and lifestyles required for a sustainable future. Education for sustainable development has come to be seen as learning how to make decisions considering the long-term future of all communities’ economies, ecology, and social well-being. Building the capacity for such future-oriented thinking is a key task of education.

This represents a new vision of education, a vision that helps learners better understand the world in which they live, addressing the complexity and inter-contentedness of problems such as poverty, wasteful consumption, environmental degradation, urban decay, population growth, gender inequality, health, conflict and the violation of human rights that threaten our future. This vision of education emphasizes a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to developing the knowledge and skills needed for a sustainable future and changes in values, behavior, and lifestyles.

We, therefore, need to think globally and act locally. This requires us to reorient education systems, policies, and practices to empower everyone, young and old, to make decisions and work in culturally appropriate and locally relevant ways to redress the problems that threaten our common future. e In this way, people of all ages can become empowered to develop and evaluate alternative visions of a sustainable future and to fulfill these visions through working creatively with others.

Seeking sustainable development through education requires educators to:

• Place an ethic for living sustainable, based upon principles of social justice, democracy, peace, and ecological integrity, at the center of society’s concerns.
• Encourage a meeting of disciplines, linking knowledge and expertise, to create more integrated and contextualized understandings.
• Encourage lifelong learning, starting at the beginning of life and stuck in life – one based on a passion for a radical transformation of the moral character of society.
• Develop to the maximum the potential of all human beings throughout their lives to achieve self-fulfillment and full self-expression with the collective achievement of a viable future.
• Value aesthetics, the creative use of the imagination, an openness to risk and flexibility, and a willingness to explore new options.
• Encourage new alliances between the State and civil society in promoting citizens’ liberation and democratic principles.
• Mobilize society intensively to eliminate poverty and violence, and injustice.
• Encourage a commitment to the values for peace in such a way as to promote the creation of new lifestyles and living patterns
• Identify and pursue new human projects in the context of local sustainability within an earthly realization and a personal and communal awareness of global responsibility.
• Create realistic hope in which the possibility of change and the real desire for change are accompanied by rigorous, active participation at the appropriate time in favor of a sustainable future for all.