REPORT OF UNESCO EXPERT MEETING ON - APCEIU

urgent need to begin to develop an understanding of the key concepts that can shape sustainable development.
While only five such concepts were used in the survey, many others from the fields of political ecology and
ecological economics could have been used. These include: ecological footprint, ecospace, natural resource
accounting, life-cycle analysis, environmental assessment, eco-efficiency, sustainable consumption and so on.
A fuller set of concepts such as these (and their definitions), and which could form the basis of a contemporary
approach to environmental and sustainability learning, is provided in Box 1.
Secondly, teachers and students need increased flexibility for choosing topics and issues to investigate so that
they may concentrate on the life role relevance of schooling. However, this will require loosening the grip of
discipline-based subjects and nationally or centrally determined examinations on the secondary school
curriculum. These are enormous barriers to the reorientation of education towards sustainable development,
barriers that cannot be addressed by the efforts of individual teachers or even schools, no matter how
committed they might be. Effectively addressing barriers such as these requires an appreciation of the role of
education in the processes of social continuity and change, the diverse and sometimes contradictory roles of
governments, and the corresponding multiple purposes of education.
Thus, thirdly, there is a need for a major philosophical reorientation of secondary education. Central to this is
an understanding of the roles of schooling in social reproduction and the ways in which the structures of
secondary education reproduce, albeit unintentionally perhaps, unsustainable development. These structures
also provide the context for identifying opportunities and strategies to reorient education towards the
development of a civil society based upon the values and practices of sustainability.
Schools serve many purposes today beyond academic ones. Schools are generally public institutions and, in
most cases, are subject to the directions of government and its policy-making processes. However, one point
seems to be common in all countries. This is that governments have multiple and sometimes contradictory roles
and these are manifested in diverse ways in educational policies and practices (Carnoy and Levin 1985;
Schlechty 1990). For example, on one hand, governments need to ensure that education systems socialise and
educate citizens in ways that will enable them to contribute to desired economic activities and goals. This
includes vocational knowledge and skills, but also the attitudes of responsibility, diligence, punctuality and
social cohesion that will maintain and promote these goals.
This is the “reproductive” role of the state and education. On the other hand, governments particularly in
democratic countries, need to take action to maintain their public legitimacy by anticipating trends that may
challenge national well-being and by responding to public concerns about social problems, such as racism,
poverty, public safety and, increasingly, the environment. Education is one way in which governments seek to
achieve this goal, generally by developing educational policies that enhance the capacities of citizens to
respond to anticipated challenges, to identify and articulate their concerns, and to contribute as active and
informed citizens to solutions by participating in discussions about them and other public issues. This is the
role of the state and education in “constructing civil society”.
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