Into the 1992 Vault Revisiting two future-focused articles after 30 years Editor’s Notes:
Issue 27 Where’s the future in teaching? by David Ferns
In March of 1992, David Ferns makes a strong case for including a “future dimension” in teaching, going so far as to say that “to avoid this challenge would be morally repre- hensible.” Drawing on the ideas of David Hicks, Ferns pres- ents three suggestions for making this happen, one of which involves reflection and guided visualizations. Ferns’ question “How will we ever get there if we don’t have some notion of where there is?” is a sentiment being espoused today by many folks in environmental education and beyond. Indeed, it’s difficult to strive for a goal if we don’t know what it looks like, feels like, sounds like, etc. All of this serve as a help- ful reminder that as we discuss benchmarks like Net-zero by 2050, we must be specific and detailed. Most people under- stand the technical definition of Net-zero, but how many of us have mapped out the intricacies of a Net-zero world? What do we need to do as individuals to get there? How must busi- ness and government leaders react? What are some bench- mark targets that can serve as stepping stones to the ultimate goal? Engaging in these questions with your learners holds tremendous potential for educators.
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Issue 30 The School in the Global Age by Graham Pike and David Selby
In the fall of 1992, the words from Graham Pike and David Selby’s July 1991 address at a Summer Institute in Global Education appeared in the 30th issue of Green Teacher magazine. Thirty years later, we can confidently state that the environmental education field has, to varying degrees, embraced all five dimensions of the robust framework that Pike and Selby propose “for shifting schooling at all levels further along the road from the pre-global to the global.” Particularly relevant is their third dimension — health of the planet awareness — wherein they state that “students should appreciate the differing worldviews and value systems which give rise to such diverse perspectives.” Through a complex combination of factors — declining in-person communica- tion and rising internet anonymity surely chief among them — tolerance of differing worldviews is suffering in many factions of society. At a time when perspectives seem to be getting ever more entrenched, it would be prudent to heed Pike and Selby’s advice and help our learners “understand a range of arguments surrounding global issues.”
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Illustrations from left to right by Janie Ravenhurst and Paul Papin
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