Think Piece: Sustainability Education and (Curriculum) Improvisation

Abstract

In this article I (re)think sustainability education in view of a (re)turn to realisms  because existing philosophies have failed to adequately respond to an impending  ecological disaster and the fast pace of new technologies. This historical moment has made geologists posit a new epoch, the Anthropocene. I argue that responses to this historical moment must overcome  correlationalism generally, and in particular a narrow form of it called instrumental rationality. Correlationalism means that reality appears only as the correlate of human thought. I suggest that sustainability might be liberated from the fetters of  correlationalism by invoking a metaphor from jazz music,   improvisation. Improvisation that is anti-correlationalist involves being attuned to the reverberations of the earth, to its materials flows, rhythms and intensities. Moreover, pedagogy as improvisation does not merely use the earth as a stage on which   pedagogical acts are performed, but pedagogy is bent by the earth.  Moreover,   sustainability education involves the development of sensibilities that are an amalgam of visual (videre), listening (sontare) and feeling (sentire).