Education is the seed of change

Heatwaves, bushfires, coral bleaching, species that are about to extinct, toxic air, polluted water, burn-outs, chronic illnesses, mico-plastics and dead zones. Is this the world we want our children to grow up in?

When I look at schools, I see factories and monoculture farms that replace children's trust in nature for endless economic growth, at the expense of the earth and the expense of their own health & happiness. Children are born with this huge debt that isn't theirs. Our behaviour deprives them of a sustainable future or one at all.

Unconsciously the education system is teaching children to work against nature, which then means that they learn to work against themselves - because we are all nature. Right now, schools teach us to be better consumers instead of better humans. And we already see that resulting in the fact that the average adult is consuming up to 3,3 earths (in the Netherlands) a year in a growing mental health crisis.

Why do we still expect children to adapt to an unsustainable education system, while the education system itself fails to adapt and is stuck in an old narrative? The stories we are told in school become a self-fulfilling prophecy and are reflected in the way we eat, the way we feel and the way we behave.

I mean, we can all agree on the fact that plastic doesn’t end up in the oceans by itself, the soil does not mysteriously degrade on its own, bees don’t commit suicide and for sure air pollution is not created by trees. Climate change is not an environmental problem, it’s a civil problem and starts with how and what we learn. Because the way we learn defines the way we live.

We can be the change because we are the change. That is what makes us humans so special. We can choose to be the creators of our problems or the creators of our solutions.

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