Climate change: educational change

More of the same

We continue to over-consume, while global warming is now perceptible in many parts of the world. In France, you'd have to be deaf and blind not to see for yourself, without even needing to read an IPCC report or the warnings of a Jeremy Rifkin or a Greta Thumberg, that streams are drying up, glaciers have disappeared, canals are being closed, extreme temperatures are being reached, trees and forests are suffering, and so on.

Some leaders make speeches and do what they can, when they're not engaging in green-washing contests. This is also true of educational leaders, who only receive what they can count: tuition fees, students, expenses, accumulated training days, budgets, IT investments.

They pretend to be part of the action, but they're just doing more of the same: getting together, talking about climate transition in lecture halls, but without any willing, concrete action. It's one of the characteristics of systems to maintain existing equilibria. Leaders are trained by their schools to manage known equilibria. In the event of imbalance, they find themselves in difficulty.

Yet pedagogy is not a matter of measurement. It is above all a singular mediation with oneself, others and the world. In systemics, Bateson (Palo Alto School) describes three types of change, corresponding to different evolutions of systems. A level 1 involving slight adaptation, a level 2 involving changes in behavior and a level 3 involving in-depth transformation of our beliefs.

How does pedagogy enable the "level 3 changes" that are essential to accompany the expected mutations?

Level 1 change: production and industrialization

This is the highest level of homeostasis. It's about maintaining and growing the system as it is. It's a change that consists in feeding the situation with more of the same. This change is marked by the idea of adaptation within a logic of minor adjustments.

In our business models, it's a question of industrializing even more, by using economies of scale and modifying content. In education, for example, we recycle content in interactive media, barely touching it up, at most individualizing it. The teacher's lecture in the amphitheatre is simply filmed and broadcast online.

The same input on the environment and climate, but with learners who are just as passive to listen to, but more numerous. It may be possible to teach them to plant a different species of tree, better suited to a warming climate, or to reduce water consumption, but there's nothing frontal about a substitution effect in place.

Level 2 change: servuction and co-production of knowledge

Level change requires substantial changes in behavior. It requires a greater commitment to action. It aims for resilience because learners themselves are involved in the production of knowledge and services that concern them. They learn not by listening and duplicating the known, but by activating.

A pedagogy of commitment and action is promoted here:

• creation of research-action partnerships, creation of chairs
• team immersion in local areas
• community building, collective intelligence, open forums, community support
• executive training through research
• inter/multi-disciplinary approach
• operational training-action to create hot spots of inspiration: farm-schools, municipal agricultural boards, etc.
• teaching territorial challenges (innovation university)
• deployment of mode lab.
• project- and case-based teaching that can be integrated into a variety of systems
• project financing: Banque des Territoires, Europe
• incubator for training and inspiring practices
• exemplary teaching: a film that provides solutions
• public/private partnership
• training hybridizing engineer/administrator profiles
• mismatch of goals: design of shared resources rather than career-long training for managers

Level 3 change: disruption and radical innovation in thinking patterns

This involves a transformation of beliefs about the very orientation of the system and the coherence that links its component parts together. Here, we can talk about innovation or even disruptive innovation. Three shifts in beliefs are currently taking place:

• Transhumanism is an international intellectual movement that embraces the use of new science and technology to enhance human mental and physical capabilities in order to correct what it sees as the undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as pain, disease, aging or even, ultimately, death.
• Shamanism is a way of connecting with nature, a practice centered on mediation between human beings and spirits, souls or deities. It's a belief in invisible forces that dominate us, with which the shaman puts us in touch.
• Accelerationism: the accelerationist manifesto projects rapid technological development as the best chance of meeting the climate challenge. Accelerationism is a reformulation of capitalism that postulates the conviction that today's technology can be used not only to generate profits, but also to help people.

If these three trends leave us a little disappointed, we're going to have to come up with something else.

Taking charge

It's not clear that Type 3 changes can be achieved quickly, or even efficiently. Just as a tree is limited in its growth to a certain height, a certain depth for its roots and a certain circumference, our planet is also limited in its capacity for human growth.

The currentAnthropocene era confronts man with his responsibilities towards nature, and demands that he learn from his human nature to remain connected to the world. Citizens are waiting for new educational leaders who consider our relationship with nature, but also for control systems that avoid career politicians focused on their short-term re-election.

If they do nothing, they are condemned to Level 1 change. They also have the opportunity to learn by seizing the formidable digital potential to bring together committed but dispersed players, showcase initiatives that work and form tight-knit communities to influence fragmented societies.

Source

Gregory Bateson http://gserpry.free.fr/index.php/qui-suis-je/pratiques/6-systemique

Accelerationist Manifesto https://www.multitudes.net/manifeste-accelerationniste/

Le monde Jeremy Rifkin - The survival of our species depends on transforming our modes of production https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2019/10/16/jeremy-rifkin-la-survie-de-notre-espece-depend-de-la-transformation-de-nos-modes-de-production_6015648_3234.html

Greenwashing http://www.greenwashing.fr/definition.html

IPCC report https://www.gouvernement.fr/rapport-du-giec-agir-des-maintenant-pour-lutter-contre-la-degradation-des-terres-et-du-climat

France Info Greta Thumberg - https://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/environnement/greta-thunberg/

Transhumanism - https://www.aquaportail.com/definition-13008-transhumanisme.html

Wikipedia - Antrhopocene - https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocène

Wikipedia - Shamanism - https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamanisme