As the global environmental crisis escalates so does the publication of books about life in the Anthropocene. Gaining attention of readers across disciplines and genres, these books examine the origins, impacts, and implications of living in a geological age in which the activity of some humans has permanently altered the climate and the environment of the planet. But what does the age of the Anthropocene hold for education? This urgent question is the focus of the recently published book Teaching in the Anthropocene: Education in the Face of the Environmental Crisis, edited by Alysha J. Farrell, Candy Skyhar, and Michelle Lam. It is one of the few books to date that offers practical and theoretical insights for teachers and teacher educators facing the urgent challenges of the Anthropocene in their classrooms, schools, and communities, with particular relevance for (settler) 1 colonial contexts.1 Settler colonialism is a form of colonization whereby outsiders claim a land as their new home, displacing Indigenous peoples and establishing settler superiority through policy, law, ideology, and culture. To see how settler colonialism intersects with the Anthropocene, see Bang et al., 2022;Davis & Todd, 2017; Tuck et al., 2014).
Building on the scientific evidence and keeping in focus policy promises made over the decades, this report mobilizes the power of socially engaged art to bring together visions and voices of youth from across the globe in a collective effort to address the root causes of the climate crisis. It starts with the premise that education is directly implicated in the climate crisis and our failure to imagine alternatives. But it can also be the catalyst for radical change. Aiming to shift and shuffle the dominant knowledge systems and categories with the cards from the Turn It Around! deck, this report urges you to turn toward the reality of the climate crisis by capturing its devastating impacts from youth perspective in a way statistical data might not. It challenges existing education policies, practices, and patterns as no longer possible, tolerable, or even thinkable. With the powerful imagination and creativity of youth, the report activates a series of turning points — intergenerational, decolonial, methodological, and pedagogical — in order to turn around the environmental catastrophe, while reconfiguring the role of education toward ecologically just and sustainable futures.
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