Creating Regenerative, Equitable Education Systems: Key Questions and Policy Options

• In Event: Education for Societal Transformation: Alternatives for a Just Future (Panel 1)

Proposal

Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, Bill McGuire, recently observed that "when it comes to the climate emergency—we are in deep, deep s***!" The science is unequivocal—humans have caused global warming by burning trillions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere over the past century. We have reached the planetary and human limits of the 500-year -project of modernity and its drivers of heteropatriarchy, racism, and colonization. This paper addresses the holsitic shift necessary for education to address the climate emergency in two ways: 1) identifying a foundational theoretical shift for transforming society using regenerative design principles and 2) applying regenerative principles to education systems as regenerative education.

This paper proposes a theoretical shift across both society and education to regenerative living, specifically through regenerative education. Humans cannot simply “sustain” the current reality, especially not trending towards ecological degradation, so we use “regeneration,” meaning renewal or restoration on both biological and spiritual levels. As a holistic approach extending past agriculture or education, regeneration includes political and economic frames needed to help fundamental rebalancing human priorities with the natural world.

We identify organizations demonstrating key aspects of regenerative education program through a global environmental scan using regeneration, sustainable, and education as keywords. An initial search revealed 248 matches, narrowed down to 68 organizations through website analysis. We classified organizations across two spectrums: 1) nonformal to formal contexts; and 2) levels of education (TK12 - higher education).

We profile four examples that each illustrate facets regenerative education, which we explore as emerging principles of the praxis of “Regenerative Education.” The nonformal, local education example is Herb N’ Soul urban mini-farm; Soul Fire Farm, a nonformal regional education example, is an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm; a national formal example is The College of the Atlantic in Maine US; and an international example is Tostan, located in Senegal, that empowers rural communities for positive social transformation using holistic education programs.

The four examples profiled above illustrate several salient principles of Regenerative Education:
1) Commitment to restoring balance of human life as part of the natural world;
2) Blending formal, nonformal, experiential, and informal education towards transformative learning for action;
3) Pedagogy focused on the “full development of the human personality” not just for individuals, but embodying the “ubuntu” understanding of the eco-based inseparability of life from life, human to human, and human to all species; and
4) Intersectional linkage of education/learning to advocacy, activism, and commitment to social transformation.

Education can play a role in shifting from its current destructive workforce development orientation to trigger urgent regenerative action. We need multi-dimensional change: (1) urgent/rapid shifts in behavior at scale; (2) deep fundamental shifts in perspective and values away from consumption and extraction toward transformation and regeneration; and (3) new creative capacity for sustained, adaptive, iterative adaptation to address climate disruption.

Authors

• Frank Adamson, California State University, Sacramento

• Michael Gibbons, American University