If so minded, you can follow the official outpourings of WEEC 8 on Twitter: @WEEC2015 – but you really should be outside. Here are a few of the highlights so far (and my indented comments ...)
Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson talks about the importance of education for all when it comes to EE and ESD
Maybe. But ESD / EE / EFS / LSD / SDE / etc / etc have never been of any importance to those within UNESCO who are focused on EFA
Irina Bokova "ESD must stand at the heart of the new Post 2015 development agenda."
This is not what UNESCO's new report on Global Citizenship Education [GCE] says – where there is no emphasis on ESD; indeed, hardly a mention.
Job Bickling Resistance to Cartesian thinking: "To understand differently we need to be in the world differently in the world differently ... less separation through abstract thinking and walls."
Is this statement so utterly profound as to shake neo-liberal capitalism's very foundations, or has careless proof-reading reduced it to nonsense? My money's on the latter given that JB has form.
Arjen Wals "Critical thinking (e.g. questioning taken-for-granted values, behaviours and systems) and disrupting unsustainable systems / routines is critical."
Well, up to a point, because that's what IS / ISIS / ISIL / whatever thinks as well. They have infantry and tanks, and we only have UNESCO, which doesn't seem fair. The point is that such critical thinking has to have a value base that takes people and planet, and their inter-relationship, seriously.
Mirian Vilela says that the peace agenda is part of the sustainability agenda
Indeed, who's against peace, you might wonder? Me for one, if the cost is too high. Odd, isn't it that a sustainable world always seems to have to be a peaceful one. But suppose that sustainability needs protecting against the intolerant? I think it's time to reach for the Belloc:
Pale Ebeneezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill, who killed him, thought it right.
Respond