Education and Capabilities for a Global ‘Great Transition’

Abstract

What are the implications for education of the emergent global challenges of sustainability? Various studies suggest that major changes are required in predominant human values during the next two generations, to ensure politically and environmentally sustainable societies and a sustainable global order. Three required moves, according to The Earth Charter and the Great Transition study by the Stockholm Environment Institute (Earth Charter Commission; Raskin et al. 2002), are the following: from pursuit of human fulfilment predominantly through consumerism, to a focus on quality of life above quantity of commercial activity; from the predominance of possessive individualism, towards more human solidarity; and from a stance of human domination and exploitation of nature, towards an ecological sensitivity. This essay considers such a neo-Stoic project—covering, broadly speaking, the cultivation of humanity’s flourishing as individuals, as collectivity, and in and towards our natural environment, each of them as desirable in themselves and in order to preserve humankind.