Review: Education and Climate Change: Living and Learning in Interesting Times

Abstract

Review: and Climate Change: Living and Learning in Interesting Times Edited by Fumiyo Kagawa and David Selby Kagawa, Fumiyo, and David Selby (eds.). (2010). and Climate Change: Living and Learning in Interesting Times. Abingdon: Routledge, xvi+259 pp. ISBN 97800415805858, cloth.Appearing in the reliable Routledge Research in Education book series, this overlooked collection comprises twelve commissioned essays on how to educate with regards to change, not only in schools, but at every level and for all ages, as some contributors do promote lifelong integrated adult education, and various forms of activism (see p. 66 and 162). Topics are diverse and broad, always relevant, often interdisciplinary in focus, borrowing either from peace learning (Chapter 3), antiracist education (Chapter 5), interfaith education (Chapter 10), religion (Chapter 9), and even art and culture (Chapter 10). In his foreword, Archbishop Desmond Tutu recognizes that a significant part of the problem is actually due to more or less ignoring the ethics of the human condition and praises, as other contributors do, an emphasis on as a global social justice issue (p. xvi). Incidentally, this theme of environmental justice is present in many essays (see p. 150).The expression times in the book's title reappears in many chapters and comes either from an old Chinese wish or derivates from a Scottish proverb, May you live in interesting times, which seemingly applies to our era of vivid environmental debates (p. 1). All essays are structured in a similar way, despite their specific approaches and distinct theoretical backgrounds, since all contributors were asked to describe how their field was so far responding to the issue, how the field might respond in increasingly times' as runaway sets in, and how its discourse, theory, and practice might in consequence change (p. 6).Many chapters are very well documented and synthesize decades of writing about environmental debates. Jane Reed's piece on environmental debates in schools, for example, compares the works of various authors, commentators and theoreticians on social learning like Lester Brown, David Orr, and Harold Glasser (p. 146). Among many strong points, many chapters aptly link environmental education with citizenship education and political philosophy; contributors such as Ian Davies and James Pitt remind us (in chapter 7) that climate is a political matter (p. …