Program

SR2004   EDUCATION TRACK

“Reinventing Education for a Sustainable World”

The Sustainable Resources Conferences are based on world wisdom, including Einstein's quote, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." Recognizing this hypothesis, the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development issued a mandate from Johannesburg in 2002, placing a high priority on increasing new and effective sustainable development education as a critical factor in achieving sustainable development, locally and globally.

The Sustainable Resources 2004 conference in Boulder responds to that mandate in its Education Track, .here are some of the new levels of thinking we will be exploring about creating new education that places sustainability as a central aspect in 21 st Century teaching and learning. The SR 2004 Education Track seeks to expand vistas of new educational possibilities for the UN's Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

Creating and Teaching New Curricula:  

The major new “Big Idea” of critically connecting all types of learning to the sustainable existence of humanity, and the world at large, calls for the development of new curricula to teach the new paradigm of sustainable development education.   Sessions on this topic feature illustrations and discussions on a variety of new curricula, learning designs and new possibilities of how people might develop their own models for combining basic education and ideas of sustainability.

Integrating School and Community: Self and Other

Integrating school learning with applications of that learning that benefit the surrounding communities has many powerful outcomes, from validating the “real life” usefulness of academic knowledge to giving both students and teachers a sense of worth to self and to others .  A narrow and unhelpful educational process fosters the illusion that we can find our own happiness and fulfillment without regard to others, or, worse, at their expense. A more authentic approach would shift the priority from "me-first" to a primary intention to do what we can to help, find win-win possibilities and long-range positive results.

Creating Global Communities of Learning : Multidisciplinary and Multicultural Collaborations
It's easy to develop chauvinistic attitudes toward our own profession, field of study, religion, political or social group. In itself, that's natural and almost inevitable. When those attitude become so entrenched that we can't learn from people and situations outside our own point of view though, we become stagnated in a world where shared thinking was describing. The United na

Alternative Models for Education: Listening and Openness

Good intentions aren't enough. A great deal of harm has been done in the world by people wanting to "help." Imposing own structures, conclusions on situations and people rather than deeply listening and understanding first often only makes things worse. Innovations in educational systems can help guard, encourage, and protect the natural curiosity and creative inspiration young children bring to the world. It can help balance linear, goal-oriented behavior with a bigger view. New models, from home schooling, to travel based education and education through entrepreneurship, all offer new possibilities to design educational processes suited to local or individual needs.