EAUC 's Food for Thought last Friday afternoon was about a question posed to blogger Gareth Kane ( Ask Gareth ...) by Dave Moreman, a senior lecturer at Staffordshire University. Moreman asked: How can I teach sustainability when I live unsustainably?
The first thing Kane did was to change the question to: "How can you ask others to behave more sustainably when your own lifestyle is far from perfect?" which is not quite what Moreman asked. Although Kane's three main points ...
- Actions are more potent than words
- Don't preach
- Don't fear the idiots
... are sound, they are not particularly focused on teaching, or working in a university, and so were not all that helpful.
I wonder what you would have said. My first thought was to wonder whether Moreman was actually "teaching sustainability"; whatever the phrase means. Kane assumed it was all about behaviour change, but I doubt it – Moreman is a senior lecturer in a university geography department, after all, so it might have been about students learning all sorts of things. Anyway, he seemed happy enough with the response he got from Kane, judging by his subsequent comments.
All-in-all, rather disappointing.
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