As promised, I didn't pay much attention to the UNESCO World Confluence on ESD but I have been looking at the resulting Berlin Declaration. "Declaration", I ask you! The obvious and unsubtle aim here is to encourage us to think of this in the same way that we consider the iconic Tbilisi Declaration. That was a defining moment in the history of the development of the field. This is sheer hubris.
The declaration presents numerous policies to transform learning and hence, it says, to transform society and the world. Education, of course, does change society, but only slowly; ie, one learner at a time, and even then not all learners learn the same things. This is an awkward truth and an essence of human learning. I do wonder if Unesco knows this.
The conference video message is here. I was struck by how many of the talking heads went off message by just saying that it was education that was important, rather than ESD. More than 50% of them by my reckoning. It was only the persistent Unesco-scripted voice-over that keeps the ESD word count up. Surely heads will roll.
Responses
Every mistake I make gets registered as a learning experience then the refrain from “Where have all the Flowers Gone?” drifts through my mind,. When will they ever learn? Work still in process.