Askwith Forum Focuses on Education for Sustainability in a Global Context

Today we live in an increasingly global world requiring educators not only to teach children about math and science, but also how to be citizens of the world, according to Peter Senge, Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) research member and MIT senior lecturer. Senge spoke at an Askwith Forum, "Education for Sustainability in a Global Context: Leading and Learning in the World into Which We are Living" with SoL Global Network Coordinator and Strategic Team Leader Jimmy Leppert, Ed.M.'09, on March 1.

"When your food travels 2,000 miles, you are a citizen of the world. When your flat panel TV travels halfway around the world, you are a citizen of the world. When your emissions from your buildings, your gadgets, and automobiles cause the glaciers to contract in the Himalayas leaving hundreds of millions of chronically-dehydrated people in Northern India, you are a citizen of the world," Senge said. "It's not a romantic idea. It's the facts. It's the world we live in. We live in an extraordinary interconnected, interdependent world, and do people understand that? Not really."

In a time that calls for a more sustainable global world, Senge, who has spent the bulk of his career examining how globalization has impacted the world and what we can learn from it, pointed out that adults often have a harder time understanding this concept than children.

Since the industrial revolution -- especially in the past 20 years -- the world has undergone drastic changes. Senge said that, rather than argue about issues such as climate change, sustainability, and clean water, he would like to explore ways that we can help. "If the problem is us and how we live...how do you work on these things?" Senge asked.

The answer is not straightforward. The industrial age education system has been critical to business development and consumer values. In many cases, the success of industrialization and globalization has positively affected business through increased production and lowered costs, but at the expense of our health and well being, socially and ecologically.

Businesses and nonprofit organizations around the world are beginning to take steps to improve some of the impact these developments and others have made on society. These "awakenings" in business organizations can also be applied to education, which Senge believes could play a key role in transforming the future.

One movement in education that has already begun linking schools directly to communities by engaging kids in building more sustainable environments through food, water, and energy is systems thinking -- the process of understanding how things influence one another other within a whole.

In particular, the Waters Foundation in Arizona has been incorporating systems thinking into education for 25 years. Leppert explained that using a behavior-over-time graph, in which students graph their feelings and frustrations during activities, can help teachers to alter instruction and also build the connection between cause and effect.

"Kids are natural system thinkers," Senge said, adding that in a high school, the students provide free energy audits in the community. "The fact is that kids want to anchor their learning in something that helps the community."