Arran Stibbe is
Senior Lecturer in English
Language at the University
of Gloucestershire.
He is founder of the
Language and Ecology
Research Forum
(www.ecoling.net), chair of
the EAUC Education for
Sustainability Group and
designer of the course
Language & Ecology which
was highly commended in
the 2007 Green Gown
awards for its contribution
to Education for
Sustainability.
(E-mail astibbe@glos.ac.uk)
There has, quite rightly, been some suspicion about the current high priority that Education for Sustainability has assumed within higher education, and some questions about the relevance of English subjects. Peter Knight, Vice Chancellor of the University of Central England, wrote in The Guardian that: ‘It is not the job of universities to promote a particular political orthodoxy; it is their role to educate students to examine critically policies, ideas, concepts and systems, then to make up their own minds’ (Knight 2005). However, the literature on Education for Sustainability holds up exactly the ideal that Knight describes. The skills that students gain to become ‘sustainability literate’ are precisely the ability to critically examine policies, ideas, concepts and systems, and reflect on values in order to make up their own minds about the role they will take in society in the future. As an example, Engaging People in Sustainability contains chapters on ‘Critical Thinking and Reflection’, ‘Systemic Thinking’ and ‘Imagining a Better Future’, but leaves it up to students to decide what that future is, and to discover paths for arriving there (Tilbury and Wortman, 2004).
What Education for Sustainability additionally requires, however, is that systems are not examined as if they existed in isolation, but examined in the context of the other systems they relate to and have an impact on (Sterling, 2004; Dawe et al, 2005). Without understanding the interconnection and interdependence of economic, social, cultural, religious and biological systems, students will find it hard to live their lives or perform leadership roles in ways which contribute to a more sustainable society.
Discussions of what, exactly, ‘sustainability’ is, are often marred by one sentence definitions which cannot possibly encompass the range of social, economic and environmental concerns that the world is currently facing. This article starts with a brief characterisation of sustainability in terms of energy descent and social adaptation, but there are many other ways to characterise it. Indeed, Education for Sustainability necessarily involves students in clarifying the concept for themselves in light of their evolving understanding of the interconnection of systems, their ongoing clarification of values and the emerging scientific evidence.
For English subjects, Education for Sustainability requires an understanding of the role that language and literature play in the construction of social, economic, cultural and religious systems, and the impact of these systems on the larger systems which support life. The outcome is sustainability literacy, which leading sustainability educator Stephen Sterling describes as ‘the ability to understand (‘read’) and influence (‘write’) society’, (Sterling, 2005). He means this metaphorically, but reading (and listening) is one of the primary ways that we understand the society around us, and writing (and speaking) is one of the primary ways that we influence that society. English subjects, therefore, have a key role to play in Education for Sustainability. This article gives one perspective on what Education for Sustainability involves, before describing the important role that English subjects can play, and are already playing, within it.
Education for Sustainability
Education for Sustainability is not about handing down technical information about the environment or encouraging students to recycle or buy a hybrid car. Instead, it actively involves students in a fundamental reconsideration of the direction in which society is heading, given increasing awareness of the embeddedness and dependence of society on natural systems, and the current state of those systems. One way of thinking about the current situation is as a turning point in history, a transition between an ‘energy ascent era’ and an ‘energy descent era’ (Roberts, 2005; Heinburg, 2004).
During energy ascent, fossil fuels were used in exponentially increasing amounts to create an enormous surge in consumer goods, transportation and food production in industrialised countries, with a corresponding rapid increase in population, greenhouse gas concentrations and ecosystem degradation. In the rush for economic growth, little attention was paid to natural limits, or even to whether the forms of growth that occurred actually increased people’s well-being. At the peak of the ascent era, there was intense pressure on universities to equip students with the skills necessary for the UK to increase its prosperity in a globally competitive world. The influential Dearing Report, for instance, included statements such as ‘competitive advantage for advanced economies will lie in the quality, effectiveness and relevance of their provision for education and training’, (Dearing, 1997), but failed to consider the impact of ‘competitive’ economies on the environment or on the long-term sustainability of society.
We now have the ultimate imperative to enter an ‘energy descent era’. If not, then the imminent peaking of oil production, combined with population growth, expanding resource requirements from developing countries, the impact of climate change and ecosystem degradation will make it increasingly difficult, and ultimately impossible, to meet basic needs of the world population. The consequences for other species would also be severe, with a wave of extinction predicted on a scale not seen since the dinosaurs were wiped out. The changes required for sustainability are too large to be achieved only through alternative energy sources, increasing technological efficiency, recycling, or other ‘fixes’ which have minimal impact on ways of life. Nothing can ‘fix’ or ameliorate an exponentially increasing consumption of resources and production of waste within a finite planet. Instead, widespread social and cultural change is both necessary and inevitable, either to rapidly change the direction that societies are heading, or at least to adapt to a very different, and less hospitable, world if that direction cannot be changed.
Unlike the energy ascent era, however, there is still potential for energy descent to be handled in ways which take into consideration both the limits of natural systems and people’s well-being. It is still possible for energy descent to be accompanied by social and cultural ascent as some of the unintended disadvantages of over-consumption (manufactured desires, dissatisfaction, obesity, debt, stress, traffic, alienation etc) are reduced, and positive low-consumption alternatives embraced (meaningful connection with other people, community celebrations, cultural pursuits, physical exercise, engagement in and re-enchantment with the natural world, etc) (see De Graaf et al 2005). In other words, sustainability is about those who have their basic needs met working towards being more rather than having more, so that all can meet their basic needs and the ecosystems which support all forms of life can flourish.
There are, of course, many other ways that ‘sustainability’ could be characterised, but whatever the priorities and the path to be taken, it is the current students who will be leading the world into the energy descent era and living with the consequences. There is now strong pressure on universities to help students prepare for new and emerging realities. The pressure comes from the United Nations via the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014), the UK Government in the Securing the Future plan, and both the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Learning and Skills Council via their sustainability strategies. HEFCE states: ‘Our vision is that, within the next 10 years, the higher education sector in England will be recognised as a major contributor to society’s efforts to achieve sustainability’ (HEFCE, 2005). While external pressure can be threatening, the new priority placed on human society, culture and values gives humanities subjects a crucial role in 21st-century education.
The role of English subjects
English language
Education for Sustainability is not about
handing down technical information about
the environment or encouraging students
to recycle or buy a hybrid car.
While climate change, pollution, ecosystem degradation and injustice are the symptoms of unsustainability, the root causes lie in population size, the power gained through advanced technology and the social and cultural systems which direct this power towards overconsumption, waste and disregard of the natural world. Social and cultural systems emerge through human interaction, and language plays a primary role in that interaction.
The study of English language can help students to understand how phonological, grammatical, semantic and pragmatic features of language can combine together to form a wide range of discourses. These discourses model and construct social reality in particular ways, and hence influence how people behave and how they treat the world they live in. By critically examining discursive constructions, such as those of progress, success, development, consumerism, scientism, convenience, free trade and economic growth, students can gain insight into the forces which have built and reproduce an unsustainable society.
The following are some specific examples of the kind of texts which students at the University of Gloucestershire have within an ecological framework (see Ecoling, 2008).
a) Financial advertisements’ promise of spiritual fulfilment if readers take out a loan and use it to buy luxuries.
b) The conflation of the size and speed of cars with the personality of their drivers in car magazines and television programmes such as Top Gear.
c) Perfume advertisements’ promise of self-transformation and romance if readers buy their scent.
d) The animal industry’s use of language to justify environmentally damaging intensive farms.
e) Economic textbooks’ construction of the fictional insatiable consumer.
f) Advertising’s efforts to make the insatiable consumer a reality.
g) Reductionist ways of describing the natural world in environmentalist, ecological and conservation discourse.
h) Representations of the natural world in nature writing, television programmes and films.
Students examine texts such as these in the context of the larger discourses they draw from, and the models of the world that these discourses perpetuate. The aim is for students to gain skills in exposing discourses which act against their interests and the interests of what they value in the world, and gain skills in resisting those discourses if they so wish. Resistance could be at a personal level (e.g. resisting the widespread model that over-consumption leads to happiness by consuming less), at a corporate level (e.g. resisting narrow discursive constructions of the ‘bottom line’ and raising questions about the ultimate ends a company is serving) or at a political level (e.g. resisting discursive constructions of the economy which represent increases in GDP as positive, no matter what their source). Whatever forms of resistance students decide to follow, English language provides the analytical and rhetorical skills necessary to argue beyond the level of the truth or falsity of isolated propositions, to a deeper critique of the models of the world which underlie particular forms of discourse. Critical Discourse Analysis and Rhetoric are already a standard part of the English language curriculum, and Education for Sustainability merely extends the coverage of sexism, racism, homophobia and other human-only concerns to consider the impact of social systems on the larger systems which support life.
Sustainability literacy cannot, however, be simply a matter of objectively sorting discourses into the two categories of ‘contributes to a sustainable society’ or ‘contributes to the demise of humanity’. For one thing, discourses are relative.
E F Schumacher, for instance, established a discourse based on the model of ‘Small is Beautiful’, because the discourse of ‘Big is Better’ was (and still is) over-dominant in society, not because of an intrinsic superiority of the small. Also, in a complex world, any fixed, objective, algorithm for categorising discourses would be partial and contestable, and attempts to impose criteria for dismissing certain forms of discourse could be interpreted as spreading political dogma.
It is therefore necessary for students to construct their own continuously evolving framework, updated in response to what they discover through texts, direct experience of social and ecological systems, values clarification and emerging evidence. It is this framework which provides students with a means of evaluating discourses in terms of their potential to contribute to sustainability. It can never be a ‘perfect’ framework, but students necessarily conduct analysis within academic frameworks, and Education for Sustainability simply requires that the frameworks take into consideration the ecological systems that humans exist within.
In addition to discourse analysis, there is another way that English language can contribute to Education for Sustainability. Unlike many subjects, English language gives consideration not only to written academic English but to a wide diversity of forms of English, including oral English, informal English and regional varieties. This is important because, as sustainability educator Chet Bowers points out, many existing social practices within local communities link people and place in ways which contribute to sustainability. Examples include social activities based around family and friends, community interaction, appreciation of local nature, crafts, sharing of resources/labour among neighbours and local cultural events and celebrations (Bowers 2001, 1993). These practices are communicated orally and informally, and passed on from generation to generation through languages and varieties of language local to the bioregion. However, there is a tendency within education for specific local knowledge of this sort to be de-valued in favour of the abstract, the global, the technical and the academic. While global/scientific knowledge is essential in realising the scale of the problems that humanity is facing, changing the direction of society requires action at all levels, including the specific, local and concrete level. English language, then, provides a chance to celebrate orality and dialectal variation, helping students to recognise that insights into sustainability can come from geographically rooted oral sources as well as written, centralised, science-based sources.
English literature
English literature has a key role to play in Sustainability Literacy. Books are, after all, an important source of discourses which have an actual or potential impact on the sustainability of society, from technology-glorifying science fiction novels to nature writing so powerful that it helps readers to regain their lost enchantment with the natural world. On one hand, the historical dimension of literature helps students to understand from where some of the key discourses which have led societies along an unsustainable path have developed.
On the other hand, within the vast range of literature there is a wealth of diverse discourses to be explored. Some of these discourses could contribute to reinventing social reality and reorienting society towards a sustainable future.
The potential of books to contribute to more sustainable ways of being is central to the rapidly evolving area of ecocriticism (Garrard, 2004, ASLE-UK, 2008). Ecocriticism started out as a form of literary criticism with an environmentalist agenda, focused mainly on British and North American romanticism and nature writing. How students approach nature writing, and the criteria they use to criticise it, depends on their own evolving ecological framework. Students could, for example, critically appraise nature writing on the power it has to help its readers
a) to move beyond reductionism, value-free disinterest, or utilitarian economic calculation
b) to discover alternative ways of relating with the natural world, such as embodied, respectful, emotional, grateful, engaged, aesthetic, or empathic forms of interaction
c) to discover value within human and natural systems and therefore work to protect them
d) to promote the kind of close observation necessary to learn from productive, yet zero-carbon and
zero-waste natural, systems
e) to fulfil higher human needs through contact with local nature rather than through the ultimately counter-productive accumulation of possessions
Underlying all of these potential criteria is the question of how much power nature writing has to encourage readers to look beyond words and books and to interact directly with the natural world. As Gilbert White wrote, ‘If I should have induced any of my readers to pay a more ready attention to the wonders of creation too readily overlooked as common occurrences … then my purpose will be fully answered’ (in Wood, 2007). On the other hand, students can also look for factors which might be counterproductive to encouraging more sustainable relationships with the natural world, such as piety, elitism, scientific inaccuracy, shallowness or tediousness.
the current trajectory of ecocriticsm is towards a broader focus, including texts such as science fiction, science writing, and cyborg writing, as well as other types of cultural artefact such as films, television programmes, zoos, or paintings.
Criticism of nature writing alone, however, is not enough if the agenda is an environmentalist one. Many of the discourses which have a negative impact on the environment have no explicit consideration or mention of natural systems at all, which is why they are so potentially destructive. For example, books and other cultural forms which promote lavish and extravagant lifestyles, reliance on inappropriate technology or absorption in the human-only world are just as important to criticise from a sustainability perspective as those which encourage communion with nature. In fact, the current trajectory of ecocriticsm is towards a broader focus, including texts such as science fiction, science writing and cyborg writing as well as other types of cultural artefact such as films, television programmes, zoos, or paintings (Armbruster and Wallace, 2001). Criticism of books and other cultural artefacts which promote unsustainable social practices is essential because it is provides a dark background against which alternatives can shine out and be discovered.
When students do discover alternative discursive models within literature which could help society to move towards sustainability (for instance, in the writings of E F Schumacher, Rachel Carson, William Morris, Gary Snyder, Gilbert White or Vandana Shiva), several paths open up for putting these models into practice. One way is for students to apply the models directly to their own lives, for instance reflecting on the different quality of experience gained in watching TV or going shopping to time spent talking with friends or interacting closely with nature. Another way is promotion of the books themselves, as essential reading to prepare for life in the changing world of the 21st century. A third way, and a very important one, is for students to creatively weave aspects of the discourses they discover, and the models of the world that lie behind them, into their own speaking and writing.
Creative Writing
The recently updated Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) subject benchmarks have recognised a ‘striking increase in the number of programmes involving elements of creative, imaginative and transformative writing’, and have explicitly included these forms of writing within the subject benchmark statements (QAA, 2007). The growth and popularity of Creative Writing as an academic discipline offers great potential for university education to promote the creation of alternative discourses which can help to open up new perspectives and directions for society. Very few other disciplines offer students the chance to experiment with language and create new forms of expression which move beyond the limitations of abstract/technical/academic language.
Creative Writing, of course, does not take place in isolation, but involves studying both language and literature. Through studying language, students get an understanding of the way that features of language come together to form discourses, and the impact that these discourses can have on the sustainability of society. Creative Writing offers a chance to write ‘against’ destructive discourses, by incorporating but simultaneously satirising and subverting them. Students can also seek out alternative discourses in world literature which are currently marginal in mainstream society but have a potentially important role to play in the transition to a more sustainable society. It is then possible for them to take up these discourses and creatively rework them, mix them with other discourses they have discovered or created, and use them as a basis for their own Creative Writing. In doing so, they can revitalise forms of language from the past which have taken on a new significance and importance in the present.
Perhaps even more important than revitalising newly relevant discourses from the past is the creation of completely new alternative discourses. If students have an understanding of the complex interactions between human systems and the larger natural systems they form part of, and are critically aware of the destructive power of certain mainstream discourses, then they may be able to create new, radically different ways to write society. At present, we do not have the answers to what a completely sustainable society or culture would even look like, never mind how to achieve it, so imagination and creativity, combined with futures thinking, are central to Education for Sustainability.
There is one important element in the creation of new discourses which goes beyond intertextuality (drawing patterns from previous texts), beyond creativity and beyond imagination, and that is the ability to draw insights from direct engagement with, observation of, and participation in human and natural systems. Ultimately, if we follow the chains of intertextuality to their end, all writing is rooted in the non-discursive world; it is in close observation of the reality beyond words that students can search for forms of discourse which go beyond the well-worn discourses of an unsustainable society. In the same way that daffodils impressed themselves into written forms through being observed by Wordsworth, students can act as vehicles for human and natural systems to impress themselves into the written world in ways which make people take notice of them in new ways. What is required is one of the three main aspects of Education for Sustainability identified by Dawe et al, (2005): reconnecting with reality. By this they mean direct engagement with real-life issues and experience, local communities, other people and nature – an engagement with the particular and real rather than just the abstract and invented. The creative side of Education for Sustainability, then, requires the development of new skills in engaged, participative observation of reality, skills which can only be gained in active learning outside the classroom.
There is, of course, no need for Creative Writing to be associated only with novels, poems or plays – finding new directions for society in a rapidly changing world is going to require creative rewriting of all aspects of society. Students will leave university and go on to take up a variety of professions, and in all of them there are possibilities for using language in ways which contribute to sustainability, whether in business presentations, e-mails, parliamentary debates, newspaper articles, textbooks, agricultural handbooks, social speeches or casual conversation. With the benchmarks prioritising a wide range of assessments in addition to essays, it is possible to provide students with opportunities to practise a variety of ways to engage creatively with the society they live in and contribute to the sustainability of that society.
Conclusion
This article has briefly discussed the important contribution that English language, literature and Creative Writing can make to Education for Sustainability, or more generally, education which helps students prepare for the energy descent era of the 21st century. Although the three disciplines were discussed separately, it is in combination that they have most to offer. The ability to ‘read’ and ‘write’ society can be gained through awareness of how discourses have constructed an unsustainable society, through the exploration of a great variety of discourses from world literature, through creatively weaving aspects of the most promising discourses into writing, and using imagination to create new discourses, ones which open up more sustainable directions for society. In the documentary The 11th Hour, Paul Hawken says: ‘What an exciting time to be born, what an exciting time to be alive, because this generation gets to completely remake this world.’ Education for Sustainability in the English Subject area is about helping students prepare to do exactly that.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Greg Garrard and Kate North for invaluable comments on the first draft.
Further Reading
Armbruster, Karla and Kathlee Wallace (2001) Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism. University of Virginia Press.
ASLE-UK (2008) www.asle.org.uk/home.html
Bowers, Chet (1993) Education, Cultural Myths and the Ecological Crisis: toward deep changes. Albany. State University of New York Press.
Bowers, Chet (2001) Educating for Eco-justice and Community. University of Georgia Press.
Dawe, Gerald, Rolf Jucker and Stephen Martin (2005) HEA Subject Network Consultation report: Sustainable Development in Higher Education: current practice and future developments. Available at www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/ourwork/tla/sustainability/sustdevinHEfinalreport.pdf
De Graaf, John, David Wann and Thomas Naylor (2005) Affluenza: the all consuming epidemic. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Dearing, Ron (1997) The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education Report. Available at www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ncihe/
Ecoling (2008) Language and Ecology Research Forum. www.ecoling.net/journal.html and
www.ecoling.net/courses.html
Garrard, Greg (2004) Ecocriticism. Routledge.
HEA (2005) Questionnaire on Sustainability Orientation of Subject Centres: response of the English Subject Centre. Available at www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/archive/resources/sustain/ sustain_report_bspa.doc
HEFCE (2005) Sustainable development in higher education. Available at www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2005/05_01/
Heinburg, Richard (2004) Powerdown: options and actions for a post-carbon world gabriola: New Society Publishers.
Knight, Peter (2005) ‘Unsustainable Developments.’ The Guardian, 8 February. Available at http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0.5500.1407543.00.html
QAA (2007). Subject benchmark statements: english. Available at www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/statements/English07.asp
Roberts, Paul (2005) The End of Oil: the decline of the petroleum economy and the rise of a new energy order: London: Bloomsbury.
Sterling, Stephen (2004), ‘Higher Education, Sustainability and the Role of Systemic Learning’. In Peter Corcoran and Arjen Wals (eds) Higher Education and The Challenge of Sustainability, Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 49–70.
Sterling, Stephen (2005) ‘Sustainable literacy: skills for living well into the future.’ Ethos 6 May. Available at http://csf.plymouth.ac.uk/files/sterlingFull.html.txt
Tilbury, Daniella and David Wortman (eds) (2004) Engaging People in Sustainability. Zurich: Union Internationale pour la Conservation de la Nature et de ses Ressources. Available at www.aries.mq.edu.au/pdf/EngagingPeopleV5.pdf
Wood, Michael (2007) Michael Wood on Gilbert White. Available at www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/gilbert-white-wood.shtml
