Education as if the World Mattered: Belonging and Interdependence as Education’s Purpose

This post was written with Ethan Lowenstein, Director of the Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition (SEMI’s). SEMI’s does tremendous work in the development of an educational approach that values, among other things, place and responsible citizenship, grounded in an ethic of Ecojustice. Check them out here.

Chet Bowers asks a question that we should all be considering, especially those of us who serve as educators: “How do we live more interdependent lives based on practices that are less dependent on a monetized world, that are less environmentally destructive?”

So what exactly does such a question have to do with education? Aren’t we supposed to help kids get into college?

Sure. Of course.

But usually the unspoken purpose of getting kids into college is to help them find a nice paying job that allows them to live independently as opposed to interdependently. It allows them to find a nice paying job because of the need to do so in a monetized world. That is, “achievement” is synonymous with “success,” which, in today’s market driven world is synonymous with making a lot of money, of having a “good job,” of acquiring the means to acquire endlessly. And, needless to say, this alienated individualism- the self as separate from relationship and responsibility to community- leads to a consumerism that certainly exacerbates environmental destruction. It seems our current story too often takes us in the opposite direction from that which Bowers’ question is pointing us towards.

We propose a different purpose of education, one that is rooted in practices that reveal our interdependence to each other and to our environment, and that promotes the value of community over the single dimension of the market.
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educarenow

This post was written with Ethan Lowenstein, Director of the Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition (SEMI’s). SEMI’s does tremendous work in the development of an educational approach that values, among other things, place and responsible citizenship, grounded in an ethic of Ecojustice. Check them out here.

Chet Bowersasks a question that we should all be considering, especially those of us who serve as educators: “How do we live more interdependent lives based on practices that are less dependent on a monetized world, that are less environmentally destructive?”

So what exactly does such a question have to do with education? Aren’t we supposed to help kids get into college?

Sure. Of course.

But usually the unspoken purpose of getting kids into college is to help them find a nice paying job that allows them to live independently as opposed to interdependently. It allows them to find a nice paying job because…

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