Premium
Environmental Education and Children's Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene
Author(s) -
KOUPPANOU ANNA
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9752.12483
Subject(s) - anthropocene , agency (philosophy) , posthuman , humanity , environmental ethics , futures contract , sociology , environmental education , epistemology , philosophy of education , social science , political science , law , pedagogy , philosophy , higher education , financial economics , economics
During the Anthropocene, the epoch characterized by humans’ destructive actions on earth, a few seminal questions may be raised: What have we done? How can we do better? This type of questioning is of course echoed in environmental education, related educational policy and research. There is, however, a difference between general and educational discourses: in the first instance, the collective ‘we’ refers to mainly adult human beings; in the second, to children. The distinction may seem trivial, but it is in fact quite important: If humans have destroyed the earth and caused children the loss of their futures, then adult humans and children humans cannot be positioned in the same place in terms of humanity and agency. What's more, adults cannot look to children and their agency for hope or for a future. Children's agency thus demands a reorientation and a certain re‐theorization. This paper deliberates on the type of children's agency that is promoted by various environmental discourses—human, posthuman and other—and discusses what kind of agency children can possibly attain.