Value Creation and the Revitalization of Dependency as a Core Goal of Eco-Critical Education

• In Event: Hope and Joy in Curriculum Studies: Engaging With Daisaku Ikeda's Thought

Abstract

This paper brings Ikeda’s philosophy into dialogue with ecocritical pedagogy and its impact on teacher education. Specifically, it draws on three ideas from Ikeda (2010, 2014, 2017): hope, value creation, and the mutual possession of the diverse conditions of human life. Reading Ikeda has made the panelists reflect on his experiences as a high school teacher in Detroit. He employs vignettes of those experiences as a narrative thread—reflections to connect lessons learned from teaching both with Ikeda’s ideas and with ecocritical ideals—to think deeply about how we prepare teachers to challenge neoliberal assumptions and beliefs about hierarchy, dependency, difference, and the dualisms that threaten sustainability and justice. To conclude the panelist explores how the rehabilitation of our understanding of and attitude toward dependency is a value-creating act crucial to ecocritical education. His goal is to advance a type of education that resolves destructive cultural tensions, makes space for “the very best in each of us” (Ikeda, 2014, p. 2), and moves us toward a world of authentic hope, joy, peace, and “value creation for global change” (Ikeda, 2014).

Author

• John J. Lupinacci, Washington State University