Tomorrow Today

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The foundations of ESD

in early childhood education

Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

ne of the most important questions today is how to educate

the next generation for a sustainable society or a sustain-

able world. This is a question that implies environmental,

economic and socio-cultural integration. Today we know that we

(adults) use more than our fair share of the world’s resources.

This must change! But even though we are responsible for what

we have failed to do, we need to educate the next generation to

become better prepared for taking decisions towards ensuring that

worldwide economic development is sustainable. The next genera-

tion has to be better prepared than our generation has been to

revert from our unsustainable path of development and to meet

the challenges of our society. For our children to have a good life

in the future, we have to think of the future as beginning today,

and in particular with their education in early years. So what kind

of education are we talking about?

Working towards a sustainable world means getting our

priorities right: justice, human rights and ethics, notions

all included in democracy and the

UN Convention on

the Rights of the Child.

Wilkinson and Pickett

claim:

“The truth is that modern inequality exists because

democracy is excluded from the economic sphere.”

Democracy then becomes a key factor in education for

sustainable development (ESD) and in the education of

young children. This also includes knowledge of nature

and ecology. Each of these notions is important in early

childhood education and has been for a long time, but

to make these aspects part of sustainable development

means integrating them into the whole – that is, creat-

ing an education in which children become aware of how

culture and nature are interdependent. In early childhood

education terms this means, for example, focusing on life

style questions related to production and consumption

– a theme that teachers could easily work with, with the

aim of making the three pillars (environment, economy

and the socio-cultural organization) meaningful and

relevant to young children.

Let us begin far above the heads of children, where

today there are a number of international agreements,

such as Education for all, the Millennium Development

Goals, the Literacy Decade, the UN Convention on the

Rights of the Child and the Decade of Education for

Sustainable Development (DESD), which all strive for

a more just world, where boys and girls, rich and poor,

people from South and North, of different ethnic origins,

etc. have equal rights but maybe not equal opportuni-

ties. People’s living conditions in terms of equality are

strongly related to their health, well-being and educa-

tional success.

We also know from research that the first

years of life are so important for each child’s life in the

future, not least for laying the foundations of an interest

in other human beings and in nature.

Work in the area of policy for ESD

and young children

When Sweden hosted an international workshop on the

topic of ‘

The Contribution of Early Childhood Education

to a Sustainable Society

’

in May 2007, it was the first

time ESD was related to early years education in a work-

shop at this level. This workshop was followed up one

year later by a workshop where representatives from

higher education, schools and teacher education, infor-

Poster for OMEP’s World Congress 2010

Image: Göteborgs universitet