August was a creating month in our house. I laboured over the construction of a book chapter, and my wife over the re-creation of a 1930s dress. Hers is in silk georgette; mine in duller stuff in every sense. The chapter title says it all: ESD: a critical review of concept, potential and risk
Both are a result of careful finger-brain interaction, though my word processor is much more forgiving of error than are her scissors. And stitches are more laboriously undone than inapt phrasing – of which there was plenty. That said, we have both been in the doing – undoing, ravelling – unravelling, and stitching – restitching business with their all frustrations generously shared between us. She has had to learn how to handle the expensive silk, to see how it hangs and falls and slips. I'm not sure what I've had to learn other that even more patience than normal in moving text –great slabs, and tiny splinters alike – to see where the best fits were for the arguments to emerge and flow. But, unlike my wife, who had a pattern (which she made herself) to follow, I only had the argument I wanted to pursue that was encoded in my Abstract:
The last 50 years have shown how human socio-economic development continues to compromise the biosphere’s ability to support life on Earth. In response, United Nations’ commissions, conferences, and summits, have resulted in ideas around sustainable development, and much international activity on socio-economic and environmental goals. In parallel with this, over the same period, education, particularly in schools, has come to be seen as a crucial social strategy if new ways of socio-economic development are to emerge that will enable everyone to live well, and keep within the Earth’s ability to support life – now and in the future. UN processes have resulted in the idea of education for sustainable development (ESD), and a Decade (DESD: 2005–2014) of global activity has focused on this. ESD can be thought of as the bringing together of a wide variety of educational strategies aimed at addressing the existential problems of human socio-economic development. But, as we near the end of the Decade, what can we say about how ESD is conceptualised and interpreted; about its coherence and usefulness as an idea; about how well it fits within education systems and schools; about its potential as a strategy to change educational experiences across the globe; and about the uncertainties and ambiguities at its heart. This chapter examines these questions and puts forward a number of issues for both practitioners and policy makers to consider in post-Decade deliberations.
"when I started in on the plain canvas I hadn't the slightest idea as to what sort of industrial scene would result. But by making a start, by putting a church or chimney near the middle, [the] picture seemed to come bit by bit."
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