children’s experiences.But does this mean a new form of league tablereporting, perhaps, on ‘contextual well-beingadded’? Not necessarily. It may be better if theparents, teachers and children at a school decidefor themselves, after advice, on the metrics theywill use to measure progress, with the role ofthe DfE merely to ensure that these metrics arerobust and that good processes are adopted. It istrue that schools will have to be held accountableif more attention is to be paid to well-being, butthat does not necessarily mean league tables orcentralised control. The accountability can itselfbe local. Indeed, given the value of co-productionand the importance of flourishing staff, rigidcentralised mechanisms may well be counterproductive.Having said this, we do believe that measuringthe well-being of children across the country –and establishing statistical relationships and, indue course, causal pathways between levels ofwell-being in different places and the objectiveconditions that apply in those places, includingschooling – will play a crucial part in makingchildren’s well-being a higher priority than itis now. There will be lessons for governmentpolicy-makers and individual schools from theresults of this analysis.And this may happen. The Office for NationalStatistics has started to measure adult subjectivewell-being and work is now under way to developeffective measures of children’s well-being. In duecourse, annual figures could be published on theproportion of children who are flourishing alongwith an analysis of what is driving movements inthese figures in different places. The task now isto ensure that these figures and this analysis arepublished, and that teachers, educationalists andpolicy-makers can learn from the results so as toimprove children’s well-being.Education for the good society | 29
6. Education forsustainabilityTeresa BeltonClosing the gap between ourselvesand the EarthThere is no doubt that the rich and the relativelyaffluent of the world are living unsustainably.The burning of fossil fuels to create energy withwhich to manufacture consumer goods, powerelectrical equipment of all kinds, and transport usand our commodities by land, sea and air is in theprocess of generating changes to global climatesystems, which are likely, in time, to make humanand other life impossible in some parts of theworld and difficult in many others. Excessive orunwise use of other natural resources, such aswater and land, also poses a growing threat tohuman well-being.But capitalism and the dogma of perpetualeconomic growth stoke a motivation to createfinancial gain at every turn. Coupled withthe widespread human desire for acquisition,comfort and convenience, this means that wein the UK are living well beyond the means ofthe Earth to support us. It means, too, that thepoor and disenfranchised of the world continueto be exploited in order to maximise profit, atthe cost of social cohesion. The urgent needfor environmental (as well as intertwined socialand economic) sustainability demands that wemust find ways of learning to live differently.Education, in the widest possible sense of theword, is surely our best hope and means ofachieving this. It has the potential to make adifference on several fronts.The globalisation of trade has made the infrastructureand interconnections of everyday lifeincreasingly complex. Every country works tomaximise its exports, and rising affluence haswitnessed ever-increasing material expectations.We no longer produce very much in the UKof what we buy here, and very few indeed ofour everyday needs for food, clothes, furniture,means of transport and so on are supplied withinour own localities. Take fruit and vegetables, andeven apples, a basic foodstuff which once grewabundantly in England, are now imported fromChile, New Zealand, the US and other farawayplaces. In addition, we have come to expect to eatany type of produce all the year round, regardlessof growing season, and have developed a taste forexotic fruits.The result of these disarticulated patterns ofproduction and consumption is that many peopleare no longer aware, as our ancestors were, ofthe dynamic, interactive essence of the naturalenvironment. If a factory near where we live leakseffluent into a river the pollution of the water isregarded as a shame for wildlife, but the significancedoes not go much further: it does not meanthat we could go hungry for lack of fish to eat.If a vegetable crop fails because of unfavourableweather conditions we shrug our shoulders andbuy something else instead, possibly from thefreezer cabinet of the supermarket. Our highlycomplex and sophisticated way of life meansthat many have lost awareness of and feeling forthe natural environment’s sensitivity to changebecause we are no longer in intimate contact withit, nor immediately dependent on it. The damagecaused by our habits tends to be geographicallydistant from us, develops over time, or maybe obscured by technology, and therefore goeslargely unnoticed.Specialisation and the bigger pictureAt root, much of the activity whose effects nowthreaten the natural world on which we dependstems from individual choices and decisions.These may be enacted in either personal oroccupational life. Education therefore has acrucial responsibility to enable people to appreciatethe actual, if hidden, consequences of theireveryday behaviours and expectations. It needsto balance a focus on product with a focus onprocess, both in general and in particular, andto complement a respect for knowledge withthe encouragement of a questioning stance.It comes as a surprise to most people, forexample, just how many common productscontain oil. Dependence on this commodityis doubly problematic: its supply is becomingpolitically, financially and environmentally less30 | www.compassonline.org.uk
- Page 1 and 2: Educationfor theGoodSocietyThe valu
- Page 3 and 4: Acknowledgements:Compass would like
- Page 5 and 6: ContributorsLisa Nandy is Labour MP
- Page 7 and 8: IntroductionEducation for the Good
- Page 9 and 10: 1 This article has been developedou
- Page 11 and 12: 8 See Ann Hodgson, Ken Spoursand Ma
- Page 13 and 14: 13 The most comprehensiverecent res
- Page 15 and 16: 1 See for example B. Simon, ‘Cane
- Page 17 and 18: 10 J. Martin, Making Socialists: Ma
- Page 19 and 20: the poorest homes (as measured by e
- Page 21 and 22: 1 In 2008, 15 per cent ofacademies
- Page 23 and 24: 1 Angela McRobbie, The Aftermathof
- Page 25 and 26: 8 Christine Skelton, Schooling theB
- Page 27 and 28: 1 See www.education.gov.uk/b0065507
- Page 29: 13 Barbara Fredrickson, ‘Therole
- Page 33 and 34: well as cognitively. Real understan
- Page 35 and 36: 7. Schools fordemocracyMichael Fiel
- Page 37 and 38: and joyful relations between person
- Page 39 and 40: 8 Wilfred Carr and AnthonyHartnett,
- Page 41 and 42: 1 Winston Churchill, quoted inNIACE
- Page 43 and 44: 9 See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ed
- Page 45 and 46: 1 The Learning Age: A Renaissancefo
- Page 47 and 48: nities, and not have the public-pri
- Page 49 and 50: 4 Engineering flexibility: a system
- Page 51 and 52: other countries to require their re
- Page 53 and 54: 6. Remember that many of the outcom
- Page 55 and 56: 2 Adrian Elliott, State SchoolsSinc
- Page 57 and 58: 4 Peter Hyman, ‘Fear on the front
- Page 59 and 60: 12. Rethinking thecomprehensive ide
- Page 61 and 62: training, be part of a local system
- Page 64: About CompassCompass is the democra