Filed under: Inspirations, We Are The Teachers | Tags: alain de botton, Environment, epicurus, happiness, LEEF, morgan phillips, sustainability, We Are The Teachers, Wellbeing
Anna Portch of London Environmental Education Forum and I hosted a residential weekend course for Environmental Educators down in Somerset back in February. The course title was: ‘What do we want our Children to grow up to be?’ and we all had a fantastic weekend of discussions about what education for sustainability is, what it could be, what we can learn from our allies in the world of psychology, music, art, poetry, philosophy and ecology and what education more broadly is. Below are some resources that were mentioned over the weekend, please feel free to leave comments with your reflections on the course and links to other useful resources!
1. A slightly edited quote from my chapter in The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy:
- What do we want our children to grow up to be? Do we want them to be shallow, individualistic, infantilised, anxiety ridden, status obsessed, selfish consumers? Or do we want them to have fulfilling and meaningful lives, characterised by generosity, intelligence, community spirit, stable levels of self-esteem and maturity? If our educational, political, societal and cultural systems continue to foster children who will become the former, sustainability may well remain, as John Foster (2008) describes it, a ‘mirage’. If sustainability is to become a reality, we need learners to become the latter. Education, in all its forms, has a very important role to play in realising this.
2. A link to the 20 minute Alain De Botton film ‘Epicurus on Happiness’ you can link from this one to all his other films from that series and his excellent ‘Status Anxiety’ documentary. Its great to show before creating a Happiness Wall like this one!
3. The New Economic Foundation (NEF) work on the The Five Ways to Wellbeing is something I’ve used to frame my work with Global Footsteps. Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning, Give.
4. You can find lots about the Hedonic Treadmill if you read books by people like Oliver James, Tim Kasser and Tom Hodgkinson, here is a little quote that sums it up:
- Looking at the data from all over the world, it is clear that, instead of getting happier as they become better off, people get stuck on a “hedonic treadmill“: their expectations rise at the same pace as their incomes and the happiness they seek remains constantly just out of reach.
—John Lanchester, “Pursuing happiness,” The New Yorker, February 27, 2006
5. We talked a lot about Values, what our values are and, more importantly, about how we seek to attain, protect, conserve, win, borrow, etc, the things we value. I wrote an article about this at about the same time we were doing the course; it’s over on my becoming green blog.
6. Anna led a workshop on creative writing and we spent a very fun hour or two creating stories with a strong sustainability message, I was really impressed and highly amused by what came out! Here is a link to my favourite children’s book The Lorax.
7. Lastly, I put a playlist of songs on in the background while we were enjoying Danny’s awesome cooking, here it is:
