Tomorrow today; 2010 - unesdoc - Unesco

Image: Lyle BenkoMid-Decade Assembly at BonnESD as their issue. Also the prospect of comprehensively reorientingexisting education systems that were largely being hampered bybudgetary restrictions from the recession of the early 1990s proveda major deterrent for ministries, both in the developed and developingworlds.The formal education sector was slow to react and in the earlydays of the 1990s, it was the energy and help of the adjectivaleducations that largely nurtured and developed ESD. It was EE,development education, citizenship education, global education,peace education and a host of other ‘adjectivals’ oriented tosocial issues that kept ESD growing and maturing. This assistancecontinues today with the emergence of green economics, ecologicaleconomics and climate change education etc.Despite the hesitation of the formal education systems, theneed for ESD grew. By 1996, the UN Commission on SustainableDevelopment (UN CSD) identified ESD as one of the four mainpriorities for the UN system’s sustainability programme and calledfor action in this regard throughout the UN system. The Commissionspecifically requested UNESCO to develop guidelines for the reorientingof teacher education to address sustainability.Slowly, ESD developed in the academic world. The late 1990ssaw academic journals publishing ESD research and opinion pieces.UNESCO did its best to maintain the support of the crucial adjectivaleducations but also to slowly raise the profile of ESD withinformal education. By 1996 the four main thrusts of ESD (i.e. accessto basic education, reorienting existing education from that whichfocused solely on development, public awareness raising and training)were becoming better understood. Many ministries of educationsaw the connection to access to basic education largelyas an issue in developing countries but also recognizedthe need to address ‘quality’ from the perspective ofthe large numbers of under-educated people in thedeveloped world. Slowly the first thrust expanded fromsimple access to retention to address the high dropoutrates in all countries.The idea of access to quality education led to discussionsregarding the very purpose of education and theemergence of the Delors Report titled ‘Learning: thetreasure within’. Eventually the discussions around EFAenlarged to ask What education for all? In the north,the questions around the first thrust regarding qualityeducation finally led to the engagement of formal education,as these were legitimate questions that ministrieshad to answer and for which they could be formallyheld responsible. Ministry officials could comprehendquality whereas they did not understand ESD as yet.The first attempt to carry out the UN CSD’s requestto develop guidelines for reorienting the world’s teachereducation systems occurred as a side meeting at thetwentieth anniversary of Tbilisi in Thessaloniki, Greecein 1997. This resulted in the formation of the firstUNESCO Chair in ESD. The Chair was tasked with thedevelopment of these guidelines and it was within thisprocess, which engaged teacher education institutions(TEI) from over 25 countries worldwide, that seriousinroads were made to engage the formal disciplines[ 24 ]