Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

Here the results of the quantitative coding of official documents prompt more
questions than they answer. In the case of China, for example, we find economic
sustainability coded 29 times in the national policy documents analysed, and
environmental sustainability only once (see Appendix II-1). However, the National
Outline for Medium and Long-term Educational Reform and Development,
promulgated in 2010, incorporates references to the importance of ESD —
relating to both its environmental and economic dimensions. As early as 2003,
the Education Ministry issued a set of ‘Guidelines for the Implementation of
Environmental Education in Primary and Secondary Schools’, and since then
China has organised an ‘International Forum on Education for Sustainable
Development’ six times. Public concern over pollution and environmental damage
has intensified in recent years (not least amongst well-heeled urban residents),
putting pressure on the government to tackle problems such as climate change,
smog and food safety (The Economist, 2017a). Signalling official commitment
regarding these issues is one function that curricula and textbooks can serve.
For Korea, meanwhile, analysis of the ‘National Guidelines for the Elementary
and Secondary Curriculum’ (NCF, 2015) revealed a predominance of statements
relating to ‘human resource development; human capital; skills; knowledgebased
economy; career, job, employment’. Economic sustainability was accorded
considerable emphasis, especially in the sections pertaining to secondary
education. The Framework stipulated that schools should ‘operate departments
based on the changing needs in the job market and industrial need’ (NCF, 2015,
p. 55), develop practicums, ‘implement a curriculum closely linked to industrial
demands’ (p. 57), and offer counselling so that students can ‘systematically
take appropriate courses to their prospective careers’ (p. 53). At least in this
elaboration of national priorities for education, environmental as opposed to
economic sustainability did not feature prominently. Korean secondary schools
do offer an ‘Environmental Studies’ course as one of a number of elective options,
but it is taken up by few students since such options are not required for high
school graduation.
For Japan, lifting sustainable development up the international agenda has
been linked to the country’s efforts to position itself as a leader in the field. As
Mochizuki (2017) observes, as early as the 1980s political elites saw the promotion
of environmentalism on the global stage as ‘an opportunity for the Japanese state
to demonstrate its “dignity”’ (i.e. to garner international prestige) (p. 4). This was
a factor in Japan’s sponsorship of the Brundtland Commission, which developed
the most frequently-cited definition of sustainable development as meeting ‘the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations
to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987). It also informed Japan’s spearheading
of the Kyoto Protocol, and its later proposal for the United Nations ‘Decade of
Education for Sustainable Development’ (DESD). The tendency has been for
such governmental initiatives to focus on ‘global environmental problems… far
from home rather than encourage reflection on unsustainable development in
68
Chapter 3: East Asia