This important volume points the way to transformative Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Global Citizenship Education (GCED). The collected essays deliver a message of urgency, need, and hope. Written in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the volume offers a passionate, creative, informed, and constructive approach to putting education front and center in “building forward better” from the pandemic. Most important, we hear and learn from all key stakeholders: students, teachers, educators, and leaders of civil society on how to achieve Target 4.7, of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): universal ESD and GCED.
The voices of the students are the most passionate and urgent. They want to be empowered. They are begging for, and insisting upon, the tools, so that their generation is prepared to take up leadership in the fight against human-induced climate change. The student essays in this volume convey several important messages. First, the students are not receiving as of today an adequate education in sustainable development. Their curricula are outmoded, siloed, or simply devoid of the necessary ESD materials and themes. Second, the students want to be engaged, to learn about real-world problems in real-world contexts. Third, the students are ready, willing, and committed to working intensively to master the complex and interconnected topics and challenges of ESD.
The voices of the teachers are equally clear. The teachers need trainings, materials, suggested projects, and leeway from administrators, to update, gird, and enhance their curricula in ESD. The teachers know that ESD is crucial, and that their students are longing for, and demanding, a new and transformative educational environment. Yet, the teachers themselves need empowerment. The ESD topics are new, challenging, complex, and cross-cutting throughout the school curriculum. ESD cannot just be landed from above in one more course module. ESD needs to be incorporated into the school’s overall community. The schools need a “whole of institution” approach, connecting the curriculum, the schools’ own facilities and operations (for example, in adopting renewable energy at the school), the governance and training of staff, and the participation of the community, linking the schools with parents, local government, and local businesses.
The voices from the universities are also vibrant. The universities want to help lead. They recognize that the growing global environment crises, combined with the growing inequalities in society, call for a new centrality of sustainable development in the core mission of universities. The University of Saskatchewan describes in this volume how ESD calls on universities to capitalize on their great strengths – expertise, the potential for inter-disciplinarity, engagement with multiple stakeholders – to help catalyze the research, teaching, and policy engagement to catalyze needed social change. The contributions from Latin America, Asia, and Africa underscore how local and regional cultural traditions, such as the Ubuntu pedagogy in Africa, can combine deep and resonant cultural traditions and values with the ESD mission.
The messages from the educators and UNESCO are both challenging and inspiring. The challenge is that after years of advocacy, we still have not made the breakthrough to Target 4.7, according to which all learners should be empowered with, and engaged in, ESD and GCED. All over the world, there are continuing roadblocks to transformative ESD. Too many curricula are exam-based rather than experiential. Too many programs are top-down, depriving students of the needed empowerment and encouragement to act. Too many gaps remain in basic ESD pedagogy. Too many teachers have been left out of the needed training in ESD.
The inspiration, though, is the recognition that we are at an inflection point. Covid-19 has dramatically upended the old and inadequate approaches. We are in a new environment, with a new global commitment to action, and also new digital tools to reach learners around the world. Pope Francis has inspired students, teachers, and leaders everywhere in his call for a new Global Compact for Education to put integral human development and sustainable development at the core of the education mission. Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon continues his inspiring leadership for global citizenship. Current UN Secretary-General António Guterres mobilizes the entire UN system for a new Decade of Action, and UNESCO is demonstrating how ESD can be a great enabler of all of the SDGs in a new ESD for 2030 framework for action. For these reasons, the Holy See, the Ban Ki-moon Foundation, UNESCO, and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) have recently joined forces in a new Mission 4.7, to harness the great wisdom of this volume and of students, teachers, and educators around the world, to put transformative education at the heart of the SDGs.
This volume will go far to help the world achieve SDG Target 4.7. The collected essays offer a highly informative, inspiring, and practical roadmap for the path ahead. By putting education at the core of the SDGs, we will empower today’s learners to put sustainable development at the core of a prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable future for all.