Three Scenarios for the Future of Education in the Anthropocene

By Kathleen Kesson

We have entered the Anthropocene — a new era in geological history — a phase of planetary development in which human impacts on the Earth may cause or have caused irreversible damage. We are witness to “the great acceleration” in which geothermal, biological, ecological, and atmospheric changes threaten to bring about irreparable changes in the planetary ecosystem, and by extension, our social and economic systems. Every day brings news of wildfires, drought, floods, conflicts, hurricanes, locusts, extinctions, and the latest, a Coronavirus pandemic, which has managed to shut down many of the global systems we rely on for survival.

Humans (GR: ánthrōpos) have been blamed for the tragic despoliation of our Earth. It is not humans in general, however, but a specific human civilization that has driven the processes of resource extraction, labor exploitation, capital accumulation, and what we can only call “ecocide.” While historically, empires have come and gone and laid waste in countless ways to people and planet, the current modern era of industrialization/capitalism, paralleling a centuries-long narrative of conquest, genocide, plunder, slave labor, and economic imperialism has created the conditions of this new age that some scholars suggest we more rightly call the “Capitalocene” (see Moore, 2016).

Given the climate and other ecological crises, the rise of authoritarian/totalitarian governments, and the general breakdown of multiple systems, there is an urgent need to create new, nimble configurations of communities, ecologies, and learning centres to respond to the uncertain and rapidly changing environment.  The education (not necessarily “schooling”) of young people is at the heart of the future; it is only through education that a “new human” might emerge, capable of enacting the mindset and behaviors that might create a livable world. Education alone, however, absent substantial changes in culture, thinking and behavior, is incapable of bringing about the fundamental changes necessary to survival.

I offer here three scenarios for the future of education, each of them tied to various components of a dominant governing ideology. Each Scenario is accompanied by structuring metaphors as well as a dominant “binding quality.” The notion of a binding quality comes to us from an ancient Indic episteme; it is said that consciousness and matter operate in three fundamental modes: sattva (sentient), rajah (mutative), and tamah (static), collectively known as gunas in Sanskrit.  Understanding the gunas is a complex philosophical matter; I use them here metaphorically, to describe the predominant energy of each Scenario. I have drawn largely on the comprehensive projections of P.R. Sarkar (1992; 1999) for the vision of the future portrayed in Scenario 3, though it must be said that the various components of this vision are emerging from multifarious directions and under different appellations at the present time.

Futures thinking is an uncertain art. It is likely that the future of humanity will include dimensions of each Scenario; in fact, the present moment contains all of them, though Scenario 2 dominates because of the globalization of the economy and hegemonic forms of culture.  I believe, however, that the survivability of humanity is dependent on learning the lessons of the multiple current crises we face, and figuring out how to navigate through complexity, chaos and the general breakdown of systems to facilitate the self-organized, positive evolutionary outcomes highlighted in Scenario 3.

An important caveat: When considering the “Big Picture,” generalizations are unavoidable.  These scenarios are mapped in very broad strokes, and we must remember that the map is not the territory.  Details, diversities, exceptions, and contradictions certainly need to be taken into consideration.

Scenario 1

Regression/Devolution

I start with the grimmest of the forecasts, in order to disabuse us of the modernist notion that history is an inevitable trajectory of progress, of increasing individual freedom and rights, of economic growth, constantly improved standards of living, and the capacity of positivist reason and logical thinking to solve all human problems. As in the aftermath of the Roman Empire or perhaps more vividly, in modern dystopian films, societies can deteriorate rather swiftly.

In European history, the years between 500-1250 AD are usually considered the “Dark Ages.” After the fall of the Roman Empire, and due to many factors including ineffective leadership, economic failures, internal struggles for power, external invasions, and yes — climate change — the western territories of the Roman Empire entered a long period of decline. Historians disagree on many of the details, though there is a general consensus that it was a period of breakdown and change of the social and economic infrastructures.  Schools were closed, and illiteracy spread. Travel and trade were restricted, epidemics wiped out huge populations, and conflict was prevalent.

While our modern era may seem to have little to do with the European Medieval period, it’s altogether possible that we (at least in the “West”) are living through the deterioration of an empire begun in the European colonial period and culminating in late capitalism and the economic imperialism that is an essential component of the globalized economy. This world-historical empire has been engaged in endless wars throughout its reign, has deep internal fractures and multiple external pressures, not least from other empires.  Most important, as noted above, the bio-systems upon which life depends, and upon which so much of its wealth was created, are deteriorating.

In times of collective stress such as the current pandemic, it is tempting to withdraw, to retreat from the forward flow of life and pull into individual and social cocoons, burrow into the past. That tendency is currently exacerbated by the pandemic related strictures to isolate, to distance ourselves from the social world. Should these tendencies persist after the disease is brought under control, we could see a “devolution.” In such a regressive move, we are likely to see rising xenophobia, racism, religious prejudice, sexism, strong borders, and ever-increasing economic inequality.

Scenario 2

Status quo/Business as usual

Thinking optimistically, we’re unlikely to sink into the miasma of Medieval Europe, but young people who have not lived through a Depression, or an epidemic, or a war on their own territory cannot be blamed for fearing that this is the “end of the world as we know it.” This pandemic, however, and the economic dislocations, the social isolation, the fear and uncertainty that it has brought, while perhaps not the apocalypse much fear, may be a harbinger of the future. It is human nature to want to “get back to normal” following a crisis of great magnitude, to restore a sense of equilibrium and stability. But what if “normal” forms of social, economic, and ecological behaviors are themselves at the root of the crisis? Astute observers of our current modernist trajectories, including a majority of the scientific community, warn us that we are now living through a transition period, which, depending on collective decisions we make in this next decade, have the potential to transform the conditions of life as we know it on Planet Earth, and not for the better. If we continue the rate of petroleum extraction, fossil fuel burning, deforestation, unrestrained consumption, pollution, and so much more, it is clear that humanity is in for a century of increasingly deadly wildfires, droughts, floods, ocean acidification, pandemics, rising sea levels, and massive extinctions on a scale heretofore unimagined. If current power relations persist, and we do not affect a deep reordering of our economic system, power structures, worldview and ways of thinking, if we merely tinker with existing conditions while hoping to achieve what could only be a “false equilibrium,” elites will prosper while our life systems continue to degrade and masses of people suffer. The kind of thinking that has created the multi-faceted crises we face is unlikely to help us solve them, but humans may not, in this Scenario, demonstrate the will or the capacity to radically transform their thinking and their behaviors, or challenge the existing power structure.

Scenario 3

Evolution/Revolution

 The current crisis has brought into sharp relief the injustice and unsustainability of socio-economic systems that value profits over human needs and the well-being of the planet. It is possible that this moment in time could signal the “great awakening,” the tipping point that pushes us into creative new ways of thinking about what it means to be human and how we should live our lives. What if the present moment were a space of “liminality” — a moment between what has been and what will be? A space between the ‘what was’ and the ‘next.’ A space of transition, a season of waiting, during which we collectively question where we have been and where we are going.  A space in which we reconceptualize the entire edifice – the mental and the material structures that have brought us to the current crossroads in our evolution.

In Scenario 3, we find the courage to design and implement new economic structures that serve the welfare of the whole of humanity, not just the elite few. We begin to understand our essential embeddedness in nature and explore how to cultivate relations of harmony and reciprocity with the “more-than-human-others” with whom we share the planet. And perhaps most important, we overcome the false notion that matter and spirit occupy independent realms, separated by an impassable abyss. We begin to understand that the purpose of life is not the mere accumulation of material goods, or the acquisition of political power, or even the development of a brilliant intellect, but the unification of body, mind and spirit in the quest for spiritual enlightenment.

Unlike the “tinkering” referred to in Scenario 2, Scenario 3 represents a radical paradigm shift, an evolutionary transformation of consciousness, values, and human behavior. Education has a core role to play in that it is young people who will carry the present into the future.  A philosophy of Neohumanism (Sarkar, 1999), in which we reconsider the fundamentals — the nature of human beings, the nature of knowing, what we value, and how we are to live — asks us to rethink the purposes of education. Rather than educate so that a tiny sliver of people rise to the top of the global income chain, a Neohumanist education would prepare all people for the art of living well on a fragile and sacred planet. It would emphasize not just academic achievement and high test scores, but shift the focus to fostering compassion, community, empathy, imagination, insight, friendship, creativity, communication, justice, practicality, pleasure, courage, humor, wisdom, introspection, transcendence, ethics, service, and the ability to live well within the carrying capacity of our ecosystems. It would tear down the walls that have separated school and community and invite local and intergenerational knowledge and traditional ways of knowing into conversation with modern empirical science and technological know-how. Importantly, Neohumanism would welcome our inner lives into education and foster multiple epistemologies (embodied knowing, intuitional knowing, narrative knowing, aesthetic knowing, mythic knowing). Adults and young people together would plant gardens and reinvigorate forests, clean up our waterways, and regenerate the soil. We would “rewild” our children and ourselves so that we might begin to understand the vital part we all play in a living web of interconnection, a web that encompasses not just humans, but the eight million other species with whom we share the planet. Only with such an educational process might we “elevate humanism to universalism, the cult of love for all created beings of this universe” (Sarkar, 1999, p. 7).

Scenario 3 is not a pipe dream.  In this present crisis, multitudes of people are acting selflessly to care for others and serve the greater good. Heroic health workers are struggling to mitigate suffering without adequate resources. Teachers are working to reinvent schooling so that children might stay connected to their peers and engaged in learning.  Regular folk creating mutual aid societies, ensuring that those who are sick, disabled, or elderly are not forgotten. In many places, small organic farms are beginning to supply much of the local food. Young people are inclined towards egalitarian socio-economic formations, and they are willing to challenge the status quo and struggle for the future of their planet. People the world over are awakening to spiritual wisdom.  We are making the road by walking.

 The world right now is in a state of chaos – a “far-from-equilibrium” state.  Chaos is unpredictable and destabilizing, and small inputs can have huge effects, illustrated by the compelling image of the fluttering wings of the butterfly in the Amazon, causing a cyclone in China.

But chaos theory also teaches us that systems re-organize, often in surprising new ways.  A far-from-equilibrium state is a liminal space; liminality is described by one author as “the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed.” (Rohr, 1999). Will we find the courage to allow this dissolution, in order to make way for the world we hope to create?  Or will we eagerly seek the status quo, business as usual, or worse, regress into barbarism? I believe that we are in the thick of what may come to be understood as the “great transition” – the death of an old era and the birth of the new. Such a birth is not accomplished painlessly, but with extraordinary labor. Those of us who share the values of Scenario 3, who hold a Neohumanist vision of human potential and a social vision of a just, ecological and joyful Earth home (PROUT) share a responsibility to be midwives to this birth. Systems demand that we evolve and adapt. The butterfly effect reminds us that small actions can have big impacts.  Our small collective actions, mindfully taken, could have important collective impacts, so let us proceed with Scenario 3 as consciously and compassionately as we can.

About the Author

Kathleen Kesson is Professor Emerita, LIU-Brooklyn, and is the former Director of the John Dewey Project on Progressive Education at the University of Vermont and Director of Education at Goddard College. She currently lives in Barre, Vermont and is actively engaged in the work to make Vermont schools more equitable, sustainable, and joyful. Her latest book is Unschooling in Paradise.  You can read other writings by her as well as an excerpt from this book at https://www.kathleenkesson.com

References:

Moore, J. (2016). Anthropocene or capital scene? Nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism. Oakland, CA: PM Press.

Rohr, R. (1999). Everything belongs: The gift of contemplative prayer—  The Crossroad Publishing Company.

Sarkar, P.R. (1992). Proutist Economics: Discourses on economic liberation. Kolkata, India: Ananda Marga Pracaraka Samgha

Sarkar, P.R. (1999). The liberation of intellect: Neo-Humanism. 4th edition. Ananda Nagar; Kolkata: Ananda Marga Publications.