Nobody talked about the two elephants in the room

October 2012Lars Dahlström

A few weeks back I participated in a one-day conference for global sustainabilityat my previous workplace, Umea University. The title of the conference was Hard Rain/Whole Earth – a conference for global sustainability. A long and diverse list of presenters showed up to talk about sustainable development. There were people from international organisations like FAO and UNDP, Swedish government organisations like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Sida. There were alsoa number of NGOs, consultancy firms, and commercial businesses. And they all addressed sustainability from their individual and specific perspectives and areas of interests.

The day started with a slide show presentation from the Hard Rain Project(available at After that more than twenty presenters talked about their specific areasfrom being members in the unsuccessful negotiations in Rio de Janeiro for the global climate concerns, over the role of city architecture, and to the production of local food. In between there was an open space when participants were given time to discuss four general questions:

  1. If the world as it currently exists was to radically shift tomorrow, and we had the opportunity to recreate the world, what would you NOT want to continue from this world?
  2. What WOULD you want to continue from this world?
  3. What would people need to do differently now to get to that better world?
  4. What is one thing you will commit to doing differently now to get to that better world?

These questions were part of a global project called A Big Project - - that wants to create a global movement for a better and different world – a positive movement of change for all!

My main reflection after this conference stands as follows: Why did nobody talk about the two elephants in the room?

The first elephant was education. Why was there so little reference to education and the role it can play in moulding perspectives of the younger generations, especially as the site for the conference was a university – a supposed centre for critical knowledge and bold questions? The answer might be that even education and universities have been drawn into the competitive market ideology and by that organised learninghas become irrelevant in the attempts to change focus of our global attention. Or education is not supposed to be at the forefront of change these days but to serve society and the present system. You get very surprised, as a critical educator, when people talk about the possibilities to create a different world and they ignore the role of education.

The second elephant was economy. The role of the capitalist, and presently, neoliberal economic system was also absent in the discourse to create a more humane and sustainable world. Maybe it was taken for granted that the present economic system has to be left behind before a sustainable and fair world can be established.Or maybe the economic system was not discussed because of the consequences it might have for the affluent world with zero –developmentas an option according to the current development paradigm? Or that our common entrepreneurial focus will eventually find a way through innovations to save the globe and its people? So why worryabout the economy while children are dying because of starvation or sicknesses amongst the majority world, a situation that we are not directly affected with in the minority world?

So, my recommendation to people who make global sustainability their business and concern, start talking about how we can change both education and the economy. Because if we accomplish an education that is truly educative and humane and based on the idea of creating and maintaining equity and human dignity, it will create people who stand up for each other and a better and sustainable world. As a consequence of an alternative education system, the present robbery of the natural resources and of a dignified life of the majority world will not happen as it does today andeducation will become the political act it always iseven when we think it is just a technical way to gain knowledge and skills.

We can learn from the many educational attempts to work in such a direction in history as well as more recently.Just to give a few examples from different areas and places. StanislavShatskii, a Russian educator working under the first Minister of Education in socialist Russia, Nadezdka Krupskaya, developed a comprehensive educational system that reached beyond classrooms both in its organisation and methods (Partlett, 2005). One of Shatskii’s ideas was to organise education around investigations in the society following what was called the complex method.Shatskii’s approaches were supported even by the American educator John Dewey (Engerman, 2006).Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator, introduced what has become known as critical pedagogy, as a way to break away fromcolonial education in South America (Freire, 1970). One of Freire’soriginal approaches was to develop a critical situational understanding of living conditions amongst farm labourers integrated with literacy campaigns. Another attempt to create an alternative to mainstream education was introduced by Patrick van Rensburg, a South African living in exile (van Rensburg, 1984). vanRensburg started the Swaneng Hill, Shashe River and Madiba Schools in Botswana, secondary schools that were forerunners of the Brigade movement. These schools were all based on the idea to integrate education with production as an alternative to ordinary vocational training. Later on he also established the Foundation for Education with Production operating as an international organisation.

The above attempts were all promising initiatives and survived many attacks, but never became fully accepted by the mainstream of those days as represented by Stalin’s Soviet Russia, the repressive political powers in South America, or the liberal powers of Botswana. Many of these and other attempts have either been ignored or side lined as unrealistic visions or utopia.Others have been transformed into parts of the hegemonic perspective and by that been neutralised and made harmless to the system and therefore supportive to the status quo. There are also examples of progressive educational ideas that have been reduced to methods or technical rationalities.However, progressive educational attempts still survive as thought processes and visions that can influence practices and policies to create a better future.

Recent attempts have also been made beyond the field of education to create alternatives on a more systemic level. Good examples are what we know as the Arab spring and the Occupy Movement. Another and more scholastic example isthe bookThe Spirit Levelby Wilkinson & Pickett(2010). Even though the authors base their findings on data from affluent countries in the Northern hemisphere their reasoning is also relevant to the Southern parts of the globe. The authors claim that

Greater equality is the gateway to a society capable of improving the quality of life for all of us and an essential step in the development of a sustainable economic system. (p. 232)

Wilkinson & Pickett also claim that the big picture is lost as an effect of individualism and consumerism that is furthered by the unequal concentration of both power and wealth amongst the minority world of financial jobbers, business executives, and multinationals. The ordinary middle class dream to become part of the powerful and wealthyis maintained by this system, while the poor, degraded to chavs or the other, are to blame themselves for not catching the opportunities (Jones, 2011). Wilkinson & Pickett conclude their book by stating that the future depends on the political will to create a vision of a better society where

economic growth is not the yardstick by which everything else must be judged… that consumerism is a danger to the planet …our values and the way we work must be part of how we bring a new society into being … we must also try to bring about a shift in public values so that … conspicuous consumption is seen as part of the problem, a sign of greed and unfairness which damages society and the planet. (pp. 262-263)

Therefore, the only way to create a sustainable world for all is to challenge education, political, and economic systems as they operate today. It is not enough to look at your own professional area of operation, but we need to handle the situation we are in today from a systemic perspective. To borrow from the 1992 campaign strategist for Bill Clinton, who created the slogan ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ and transformed by Wallerstein (2012) we can say “It’s the system, stupid”, and we have to do something about it.

References

Engerman, David (2006) John Dewey and the Soviet Union: Pragmatism meets revolution. Modern Intellectual History, Volume 3, Number 1. 33-63.

Freire, Paulo (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Jones, Owen (2011) Chavs. The demonization of the Working Class. London: Verso Books.

Partlett, William (2005) The Cultural Revolution in the Village School: S.T. Shattski’s Kaluga School Complex, 1919-1932. Journal of the Oxford University History Society, Issue Number 3 (Michaelmas)

Van Rensburg, Patrick (1984) Looking Forward From Serowe. The Foundation for Education with Production. Gaborone, Botswana.

Wallerstein, Immanuel (2012) The LIBOR Scandal: Why is it Scandalous? Commentary no 334, August 1, 2012.FernandBraudelCenter, Binghamton University.

Wilkingson, Richard& Pickett, Kate (2010) The Spirit Level – Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. New York: Bloomsbury Press.