At the second in our #traidtalks on Thursday 5th June, we had the great pleasure of welcoming Dave Key, from the Natural Change Project, to speak on the relationship between sustainability and education, and to ask ‘Who is Educating the Educators?’
We were thrilled to see our venue so full of members from London’s diverse educational community including teachers, NGOs and environmental education initiatives such as the London Environmental Education Forum, Stepney City Farm, Vauxhall City Farm, Sustrans, EcoActive and Global Generation to name but a few!
Dave began his talk by posing some stimulating questions such as ‘What is education for?’ and after so many years of use / overuse / misuse, ‘What does sustainability mean?’ The discussion also addressed the importance of personal and sensory experience which in our current education system is always trumped by ‘rationalism’. He also discussed the transformative effect that spending time outdoors, and time alone, has on people of all ages, which resonated particularly with some of the primary schools teachers in the room.
Interestingly, Dave also made the point that there is an urgent need to educate more adults on sustainability due to the limited time frame that we have to stop catastrophic climate change. He offered the idea that creating an education system which focuses on the whole person to engage with all our faculties is vital saying ‘Although needed, knowledge is not enough.’
With the UNESCO celebrations for one decade of Education for Sustainable Development just a few months ahead, we hope that this #traidtalk will have inspired educators to also think holistically about learning and teaching, and why that could be important. Thank you again to everyone who attended.
We are delighted to announce that the next #traidtalks on Thursday 18 September will see Tansy Hoskins, author of Stitched Up – the Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, unpick the fashion industry to reveal its impact on people and planet. To book a place please email me. More details soon.
