Can sustainability become a whole new subject?

Of course! Kids will learn and absorb just about anything you expose them too. Green sustainable choices is what their future will be all about best to start them early and making it a part of their everyday!

My folks taught me all kinds of things beyond recycling when I was a young kid. Green building, farming, endangered species, biodiversity, human wildlife conflict, deforestation, renewable energy, ozone depletion… I learned about all of this stuff before I was 10. So yes, it has been a whole subject for a very long time….Captain Planet was around in the 90’s, but we were talking about “sustainability” in the 70’s, 20’s, and even before that. It is not a new subject.

It will probably have to. :) One of my favorites is Seed to Table, where kids start gardening, raising food, cooking and eating it, and returning the scraps to compost for the next year’s kids. Teaches sustainability, good nutrition, exercise, all kinds of good stuff.

The problem with the idea of sustainability as a subject is that it needs to be woven into various other subjects to be effective. Should it be on the curriculum? Absolutely. Should it be its own subject? Not at all.

The exception to this, I would say, is specialized coursework at the college and graduate level. Coincidentally, my school offers a course in, I believe, the economics of sustainability.

Yes. There are education programs now in the works. Give it one more year.

Sure, why not as long as the politics are left out of it.

University of Arizona has a school of sustainability http://schoolofsustainability.asu.edu/ thought you might be interested.

I think it already has.

Absolutely. But this will only work long term when at least 95% of our population understand what sustainability really means. Sadly, too many people still think it’s some kind of socialist garbage or tree-hugging hippie culture. As long as people like Sarah Palin can’t even spell such a word, let alone define its meaning, we’re stuck with putting the paper in the recycling bin.