In the United States, there has been a great deal of discussion about the notion of sustainability -often couched in terms of sustainable development - as well as the education of the public sufficient to promote understanding of and commitment to lifestyles that are more closely aligned with the carrying capacity of our environments. These discussions have assumed a variety of environmental definitions and educational priorities, but they all have taken a common starting point - the belief that those of us who benefit from "first world" lifestyles have trodden much too heavily on the earth. The footprints left in the wake of our wasteful and consumptive practices are deep and destructive, not only compromising life in the present but also the prospects of those who will inherit the world after we have taken (more than) our share. Unless we can lighten our step, the ecological footprints left by our generation will sit as permanent monuments to rapacious and wholly unsustainable practices.

Environmentalist David Orr has written ("Earth in Mind," 1994) that the "crisis of the biosphere is a crisis of mind." This quotation resonates with many in the U.S. who concern themselves with threats to the future posed by self-serving and unsustainable lifestyles. In addressing this threat, we need more than policy adjustments. Changes in attitudes and understanding as preludes to lasting behavioral change are also needed. In nation after nation, the consumer identity of citizens is heavily reinforced, helping to create people whose well-being is defined almost entirely as a function of having more numerous and increasingly sophisticated materials goods. Much of our formal schooling conspires in this worldview, positing success in school as the ticket to "the good life" of material comfort and personal security.

Fortunately in this unsustainable time, there are also forms of education promoted by the Sustainability Education Center and other groups - for adults as well as children - that help us all to understand the origins and the consequences of our own consumption. Such education reminds us of the need to ask - and to grasp - what must happen in this world - to our air, water, soil, species of plants and animals, and other human beings - in order for the lifestyle we have chosen to be sustained. The premise of this education is that the compulsion to purchase can be transformed by the courage to resist lifestyles that irreparably damage our world and threaten a sustainable future for others.

Sustainable Definitions

In "Sustainable Development: A Guide to Our Common Future (1987)," the World Commission on Environment and Development provides some perspective on what it is that proponents of sustainable development seek to accomplish. In the Commission's words, the essential work focuses on "meeting the basic needs of all and extending to all the opportunity to satisfy their aspirations for a better life" (p.2). At the same time, the concept implies an "acceptance of consumption standards that are within the bounds of ecological possibility and to which all can aspire." The strength of this definition, which has been widely circulated within the environmental community over the past ten years, is it's attempted integration of public policy and personal ecological ethics. It implies a set of demands- on governments to organize or supply leadership and technical expertise, as well as on individuals to bring our desires into harmony with the ability of the earth to fulfill them in a healthful and sustainable way.

However, like many terms that form the basis for international consensus, sustainabledevelopment is still couched largely in vague prescriptions which contain assumptions that educators need to reflect upon and examine with students and the general public. One of these assumptions was outlined by the Canadian educator F.H. Knelman in a 1989 article in "Teaching Peace." He describes the implications of this term as "sustainable growth modified by technological fixes to reduce environmental impacts." Indeed, there is concern expressed in many quarters that "sustainability" might serve as a cover for efforts to use technology to create more and more efficient means for consuming at rates to which we in the developing world have become addicted. The goal of this pseudo-sustainability is not healing the scars of the past, nor is it behavioral change in the future, but merely better resource management and a minimizing of unfortunate environmental impacts in the present. This allows us to feel better about unsustainable lifestyle choices to which we, in essence, are already committed. Katie McGinty, an advisor to President Clinton on environmental issues, described in an interview with E Magazine (1997) our tendency (common among many in authority in the environmental movement) to be "technological optimists." McGinty understands well the danger lurking amidst this optimism, and she is not alone. As the Stockholm Initiative on Global Security and Governance reminded us back in 1991, "unless we develop an ethical basis for human survival, all our technical solutions may turn out to be ineffectual in the long run." In fact, "ineffectual" may be the kindest thing we will be able to say about strategies wherein technological fixes (in sectors such as agriculture and medicine) have been employed as a substitute for wisdom and restraint.

In the same way that a reliance on technological solutions can be a threat to a healthy pursuit of basic human needs, our appetites can be a threat to patterns of consumption that are just and fair. Indeed, there is optimism of a different sort implied in the Commission's efforts to define sustainable development - this time both in the capacity of leaders to keep human welfare at the center of policy deliberations and in the ability of more common people to see beyond the limits of their own desires and help forge a world in which everyone -those close at hand and those far removed - will have access to the resources that sustain and nurture life. Is this optimism any more justified?

Probably not. In his groundbreaking work on the "ecological footprint," Mathis Wackernagel frequently refers to "overshoot," that is, the virtual inevitability that a system such as ours - locked into structures that promote consumption and growth - will fail to respect environmental limits. Knelman, while accepting structural arguments, is also quick to caution about assumptions of good will among political leadership that seem to be presumed in many operational definitions of sustainable development. Wendell Berry, sounding his own ethical alarm, notes in "Home Economics" (1987) the ways in which "our mental appetites are more gross and capacious than our physical ones." We are the only species, he points out, that plunders and destroys merely because of notions - of national pride or personal status. We should probably exercise a healthy skepticism towards the suggestion that a species such as ours can easily put aside its consumptive and competitive history for the sake of the common good.

Our contention is that educators who attempt to understand and teach sustainability need more than optimistic prescriptions or abstract assumptions. They require a strategy of study and action that avoids technological fixes and overly optimistic assessments of societies and their leadership. "Caring for the Earth" (World Conservation Union and UNEP, 1991) provides a sober and pedagogically helpful discussion of sustainable development. The document acknowledges that there is "no long-term guarantee of sustainability, because many factors remain unknown or unpredictable" (p.4). Furthermore, "nothing physical [natural] can grow indefinitely." Sustainability, even attached to an optimistic assessment of our ability to change consumption and lifestyle patterns, can only refer to resources that are renewable. Many of the resources that we currently ravage, including fossil fuels and the plants and animals that inhabit the rainforests, are not renewable at all.

Given this assessment, how do we proceed? How do we begin to fashion principles for sustainable living that invite the work of educators in and out of schools? For the authors of "Caring for the Earth," the starting point is this: "Be conservative in actions that could affect the environment, study the effects of such actions carefully, and learn from your mistakes quickly." These principles lend themselves to educational response and, at the same time, act as corrective measures against the seductions of technology, especially the temptation to release technological genies from their bottles before we understand something of the consequences their release might set in motion.

Pedagogical Objectives

Educator David Selby, concluding an article in "Global Education" (1993, #1), quotes a concentration camp survivor whose words hung behind the desk of a principal in the U.K. The author of the quotation bluntly states, "I am suspicious of education," suspicious because of the evil and horror that was inflicted in the camp by credentialed, well-educated individuals. The author points to "women and babies shot and burned by college graduates," "children poisoned by educated physicians," and gas chambers built by learned engineers" (p.8). While this is certainly an arresting example, the fundamental point for this individual, as for us, is that schooling per se is no guarantee of ethical, humane behavior, nor is it a guarantee of meaningful participation in civic life. The practical and ethical dimensions of education for sustainable development must be organized and successfully implemented. The goodness of educational outcomes cannot be assumed.

From the previous discussion, we affirm that a sustainability-based education must integrate knowledge and skills. It must help students of all ages to understand more and do more, to overcome barriers of ignorance and prejudice, but also of fear and a lack of personal confidence. It must assist people in the difficult task of forging an environmental ethic and then get them working to revise lifestyle habits to bring them into closer harmony with that ethic. Above all, it must be trustworthy, insisting that mistakes be challenged and corrected, and that technical skills be made always to serve human purposes. These are large tasks, but they are all necessary if sustainability is to become more of a habit and less of an ideal. Fortunately, there are also a growing body of materials, resources and activity suggestions (see elsewhere in this issue) that can help teachers and students create and sustain healthier lifestyles.

This all seems reasonable enough. What could possibly be controversial about students wanting to begin the process of solving some of the difficult problems that educators feel compelled to raise in their classrooms? In "Teach Our Teachers Well," the staff of Second Nature aptly summarizes the concerns of critics, that the action components of environmental education programs too often become ways "for advocates to promote their specific world view and a set of values and beliefs" (p.11). Concerns for indoctrination have led many schools of education to shy away from issues deemed controversial, and have also led educational programs that focus on sustainability to reduce action components to a bare minimum.

Indoctrination deserves to be countered vigorously within formal education, whether it is perpetrated by teachers, administrators or corporations. Given school's responsibility to serve the broadest public interest, it is generally not wise for students with limited understanding to be put in the position of advocating specific strategies for the resolution of environmental problems. On the other hand, there are many aspects of sustainability that cannot be grasped unless they are engaged in a direct and meaningful way. People must be able to access elected officials, make their homes and schools healthful and more efficient, and live out choices that actually enhance ecological capacity rather than merely minimize environmental impacts. These and other aspects of sustainability are skills that must be practiced. They are not a substitute for learning but the means to make that learning incarnate. Indoctrination can and must be avoided, but activities (such as green mapping and school-based waste reduction programs) that extend and empower environmental learning must not. The line between indoctrination and ecological empowerment can be a fine one, but we must be willing to walk it. For in the end, we cannot teach sustainability effectively if we do not practice it in our own lives and create opportunities for our students to do likewise.

Conclusion

Mathis Wackernagel, one of the originators of the "ecological footprint," writes in "How Big is Our Ecological Footprint" (1994) that, "If we're to continue to have good living conditions, we must ensure that nature's productivity isn't used more quickly than it can be renewed, and that waste isn't discharged more quickly than nature can absorb it." Through other writings (see below) and web sites (www.redefineprogress.org) Wackernagel implores us to become more aware of the impacts of our lifestyles. We must also learn - through formal and non-formal education, including a variety of user-friendly web resources and other materials and activities - how to lighten our burden on the earth. In a world of increasingly scarce resources and wide economic divisions, when people use more than their share, other people - those in the world and those to come - do without.