March 2016

  • Will the UK meet all the SDGs any time soon?

    Well, maybe not according to a UN paper that's currently out for comment.  Mind you, as ever, it will depend on what the questions are, crucially, on where the pass-mark is, and, probably, on who gets to set both of...

  • From Kropotkin to Mao – and back

    I was part of a creative small group at the West Midlands Sustainable Schools network before Easter.  We were asked for our views on what we might do in relation to supporting the work of the network. This is what...

  • Notes from a presentation

    The other day, I posted the text of my talk to the Education 21 seminar in Zürich.  Here are a couple of notes that I might have added to the post.  The first is about the Enlightenment (or enlightenments?); the...

  • What the poor need now are transgressive pedagogies

    Thanks to the Transformative Learning blog for alerting me to the "cutting edge" special issue of Current Opinions of Environmental Sustainability, which focuses on new requisites to [sic] universities in the 21st century. The (open access) special issue features ten case studies (from no...

  • Another landmark for Semington A

    I recorded, back in July 2011, the fact that the power station on our roof, which I term, Semington A, had reached the giddy total output of 1 MW.  It took 60 days, and as I noted back then, it...

  • A Sustainable West Midlands?

    I went to a well organised West Midlands Sustainable Schools network yesterday.  We met on the top floor of the CUBE and its over-hanging, vertiginous heights reminded me of the mercifully brief time I spent at Ocean City; sadly, in Birmingham,...

  • A Global Goals Curriculum

    There is a conference [*] coming up in May in Berlin to explore the idea of a curriculum based around the sustainable development goals [SDGs]. One of the inputs [ Towards a new teaching and school culture ] will be by Margret...

  • WEEC in the head

    Sadly, there is now an EESD manifesto for Europe.  I think it comes from our friends at WEEC.  The email alert says: Environmental education towards sustainable development (EESD) is a necessity.  There’s a wide acknowledgement about that on several European...

  • Education 21

    This is the text of the talk I gave at the Education-21 event in Zürich the other week.  Anyone familiar with my work will recognise the background to the arguments. What may be less familiar are my comments about the potential offered by...

  • It comes from coal and gas, you know!

    That's what a chemical engineer said to me as he caught me plugging my car into the university's electric car charging point the other day.  And indeed (most of) it does.  As I write this, on a cold, sunny day...