Culture, Environment, and Education in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This chapter suggests iconic language that may help to bridge cultural and ecological approaches to education in our times. First, human beings live in and have created through their ecological impact a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. The changes that the human species are bringing to our earth are dramatic from many scientific perspectives. Second, for decades scientists have understood that our ecological impacts are a function of a growth-without-limits paradigm, and that impact is the product of increasing population and increasing levels of affluence. If unqualified economic growth is problematic, the iconic expression IPAT should remind us that our economic paradigm comes with consequences. Third, students of culture need to uncover how the story of economic growth is rooted in a longer history of colonization. Fourth, when connecting economic development to the exploitation of land and people, Aboriginal experience should be acknowledged to better understand the living legacy of colonization. A cultural-studies approach to education that is responsive to the Anthropocene, that recovers a sense of the relationship between economics and ecological impact, and that interrupts the colonial mindset, is an approach that will seek to decolonize and reinhabit self, relationship, place, and planet.