This book tackles questions about the metaphysical and ethical foundations of our concern for our planet, and about educational and pedagogical implications. It pursues answers to urgent questions such as: should educational policy and practice be informed by a concern for nature and the environment for our (human) purposes? Or should we teach and learn for the natural environment in and for itself?
Chapters in this volume contribute towards the unmasking and undoing of the various kinds of denialism and pernicious relativism (cultural, moral and epistemological) that have held us in their grip and that continue to thwart attempts to establish a sane and morally sustainable set of relationships between us, human beings, and other animals and the animate and inanimate environment.
Education, the Environment and Sustainability provides educators and interested laypersons with tools for critical reflection and interrogation of their own and others’ assumptions, preconceptions, and practices affecting nature and the environment. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Ethics and Education.
Introduction: Education, the environment and sustainability
Kai Horsthemke
1. The task of education as we confront the potential for social and ecological collapse
Vanessa De Oliveira Andreotti
2. ‘Landing on Earth’: An educational project for the present—A response to Vanessa Andreotti
Sharon Todd
3. Education, anthropocentrism, and interspecies sustainability: Confronting institutional anxieties in omnicidal times
Helena Pedersen
4. Animal advocacy, fear and loathing in academia: A response to Helena Pedersen
Kai Horsthemke
5. Be the village: Exploring the ethics of having children
David Chang
6. Got milk? From Growing strong bones to nurturing idealized subjectivities
Samantha Deane and Annie Schultz
7. Psychoanalytic ecofeminist Dorothy Dinnerstein: Theorizing the roots of rapacity
Gregory Bynum
8. Educating in and for uncertainty: Climate science, human evolution and the legacy of Arne Naess as guidance for ecological practice
Margarita García-Notario
9. Co-creation in the commonwealth: Understanding right relationship in place
Mark Beathan
10. Youth power – youth movements: Myth, activism, and democracy
Lynda Stone
11. White, green futures
Cortland Gilliam
12. Spiritual exercises in times of climate change
Daniel P. Gibboney
Biography
Kai Horsthemke is Visiting Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and at KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany, and a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. His monographs include The Moral Status and Rights of Animals (2010), Animals and African Ethics (2015), Animal Rights Education (2018), Indigenous Knowledge: Philosophical and Educational Considerations (2021), and The Meaning of Death (forthcoming).
