It was great to see Chuck Hopkins at a CREE [University of Bath] seminar yesterday. He talked about the roads both to and from Bonn, and on to the culmination of the ESD Decade in Tokyo (we presume). These are roads that he has personally travelled in the long years of conferences and declarations as (environmental and sustainability) educators have tried to squeeze some commitment from educational policy makers towards a re-orientation of education systems, and the experiences that they provide, so that young (and not so young) people can be helped to prepare for the times to come – as opposed to those now gone, which is the hapless focus of much curriculum reform. It was refreshing to hear someone consistent in his message that it's not the adjectival ESD with its special interests that matters here, but the full experience of education as a whole, and it is a real shame that more people do not understand this. And an especial pity that this view seems so misunderstood within UNECSO itself.
Chuck seemed in good heart and health, and so will likely be in Toyko to help sign off a Decade that he has invested so much restless energy in. I'll drink a glass of saki to that, though I'll not be in Japan to do it.
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