“It is an exciting time to be an interdisciplinary scholar. But it is a scary and dangerous time too. … The next five to ten years are going to be filled with disruptions and rapid evolution … It’s going to be a wild ride, no doubt about it!”
An excerpt from Box 16–1 in the book EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet:
“It is going to be a bumpy ride to a post-growth future of prosperity and justice. Navigating this turbulence requires college and university students that are imbued with a special set of skills and temperaments: a steely equanimity, adept at conflict management, familiar with notions of social change, well versed in the science of sustainability with a rootedness in values of justice and community, and more at home in the metaphorical turbulence of whitewater rafting than the placid predictability of canoeing on a gentle summer’s day.
“Alas, these are not the sort of people that higher education typically graduates. Most institutions focus on producing experts who will command the respect of policy makers and citizens by virtue of their training. They are canoeists, poorly acclimated to a world of surprise, unpredictability, and opportunity.
“Teaching for this coming turbulence does not mean skimping on analytic rigor. But it does require more than getting the facts right in the classroom. Students must become practiced in coping with ambiguity and diffusing conflict around contentious environmental issues, drawing with ease on a healthy mix of qualitative and quantitative insight. They will be well served by their instructors if they come to understand themselves not as ‘I have the right answer’ elites, ready to assume their place in the halls (or cubicles) of power, but as ‘knowledge brokers’ tasked with creating and disseminating knowledge in ways that privilege values of precaution, systems thinking, and advocacy for the defenseless — typically the poor, the environment, and future generations.
“Cultivating these orientations calls for a special breed of professor, one that is open to curating student experiences that foster boldness and humility. Fortunately, professors like these exist, and they are no longer restricted to institutions such as College of the Atlantic or Prescott College, both exemplars of sustainability. Higher education is changing, and for the better, but it must quicken its pace if students are to confidently run the rapids to come.”