Bill Scott's blog
Thoughts on learning, sustainability and the link between them
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News from the UN's DONUT office
The Economist article, Friction lovers, was, in part, about the UN's DONUT [ Don't NUdge; Tell ] office that is promoting what is known (by some) as facile externality. It was also about that well-known socio-technical phenomenon, the IKEA Effect, and contained a lot...
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UNESCO announces trans-ESD initiative
UNESCO, in an attempt to stay relevant in the fast-changing, fluid world of gender politics within the UN family, has announced a new educational initiative: trans-ESD, which is to sit alongside the more usual ESD which is to be termed...
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New ESD Case Studies from UNESCO UK
The UK's National Commission for UNESCO has published a series of case studies on ESD: Good practice in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the UK: Case Studies. The Introduction says: "Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is described by UNESCO as...
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More on UNESCO competencies
I wrote the other day about UNESCOs latest and rather surreal publication on learning outcomes. The whole thing is couched in the language of competencies, as is rather too-Germanic for my taste (that is not a political judgement). This seems...
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Troubles in the USA
The details of the Trump administration's proposals around environmental protection (and education) are becoming clear. This is what the Executive Director of the North American Association for Environmental Education [NAAEE] had to say to its members last week: Dear Friends:...
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Tedious Learning Objectives from UNESCO
I've been trying to take seriously UNESCO's latest output on the Sustainable Development Goals, but it's hard going. UNESCO says that its new publication, "Education for Sustainable Development Goals: Learning Objectives, targets policy-makers, curriculum developers and educators, and that it contains learning...
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The Mississippi's orphan tears
The NAEE blog, on March 16th and March 24th, carried stories about rivers getting legal status as people. The rivers in question were the Whanganui river in New Zealand and the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India. The March 24th post cited an Economist feature on...
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a WEEC whose days are long
News came the other day of a day-long workshop for WEEC participants on the question of what environmental education is, should be, and either might or must become. Such a "is, should be, and either might or must become" confection can only have been dreamt...
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A balanced view of balance
Balance / balanced is one of those ideas that everyone seems to understand, and the word can conjure up an image: maybe of a seesaw, or a pair of weighing scales. In one sense, it's obvious how these work, but that's only because we have an understanding...
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Paul Kingsnorth argues for a defence of loved things
I've been reading a piece by Paul Kingsnorth in The Guardian. It's a reflection on environmentalism in an age of globalisation, and begins thus: "Last June, I voted to leave the European Union. I wasn’t an anti-EU fanatic but I...
