Post-Truth Development as De-Development: An Eco-Pedagogical Analysis

• In Event: 28.066 - Viral Modernity in Education: Deconstructing Post-Truth

Abstract

The goal of education is “development”, or “progress”; however, often essential questions are ignored: How do we framing development?; Whose development?; and Whose de-development? This paper will theoretically deconstruct how intensifying post-truthism affects how “development” within the anthropocentric sphere as affecting Earth (i.e., planetary sphere) to construct effective critical environmental pedagogies (e.g., ecopedagogies) to teach critical readings of the politics of socio-environmental for recognizing and counter falsities for praxis to emerge. Argued will be the need for teaching critical ecopedagogical literacy to counter the effects intensifying post-truthism to sustain Development (italics and underlined “D” indicating hegemonic framings) rather than all-inclusive, locally-contextual development. Ecopedagogical literacies will be argued as essential to determine socio-environmental injustices, to deepen and widen understanding of the politics of these injustices, to determine which populations most suffer from environmental violence that often coincides with socio-historic oppressions, to determine world-Earth balance, and problematize these and other aspects to determine possible solutions to overcome the limit situations, as termed by Paulo Freire (SELF, 2018, forthcoming (2019)). Rooted in critical theories and popular education movements in Latin American, through reinvention of Freirean Pedagogy, the literacy’s root word ecopedagogy is transformative teaching in which educators dialectically problem-pose the politics of socio-environmental connections through local, global, and planetary lenses.

Opposingly, banking education models help sustain education through continuing histories of colonialization to normalize neoliberalism (Gadotti & Torres, 2009), devaluing development. These models help sustain falsities from post-truthism by not providing students the tools to deconstruct its politics or construct critical praxis towards ending socio-environmental oppressions. Devalued in Development framings are the negative effects upon Earth holistically, altering Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) tenets (SELF, 2018, 2015). ESD models have been increasingly taken over by the “development” framing of esD within neoliberal economic models, rather than within economic justice models.
Within the planetary sphere, outside of the anthropocentric sphere, truths (i.e., “laws of nature”) are static with our (i.e. humans’) perspectives as politically subjective. Through today’s media, especially online environment, these truths are purposely ignored when not coinciding with a population’s ideology. Climate change denying as a good example of beyond “bullshitting” as defined by Frankfurt (2005), post-truth era is largely defined by lying as seen as not negative when it fits a held ideology (Lewandowsky, Ecker, & Cook, 2017). With “government by lying”, the need “to understand the broader epistemological and Orwellian implications” is essential (Peters, 2017, p. 565). When lying becomes a strength and truths as weakness, how the world (anthropocentric sphere) and the encompassing Earth (planetary sphere) eliminates possibilities of conflict dialogic within learning spaced because dialogue no longer have the groundings of some common held truths and discussions are aligned with speaking to self-ideologies rather than listening. Therefore, the foundations of all-inclusive democratic learning spaces and societies are impossible without listening and reasoning (Jasanoff & Simmet, 2017). Environmental pedagogies within post-truth spaces are based on lies with development based those few who benefit by Development with the resources to circulate populist falsities as truth without concern for planetary sustainability.

Author

• Greg William Misiaszek, Beijing Normal University