Education has been instrumental in the establishment and advancement of civilizations throughout the ages. It has spread values and ideologies as well as stimulated new perspectives and discoveries. Ideally, education has the potential to be one of the most comprehensive tools available to facilitate sustainable development, helping individuals and communities grapple with the complicated challenges of caring for people and the planet. But, as history indicates, education itself is still evolving and not along a simple, easily identifiable trajectory.

The varied aims and structures of educational systems often make reforming education to fit the times a complex, multidimensional task. The outstanding differences between education systems can generally be attributed to disparate purposes, content and access. The varied biological, cultural, religious, economic and political aspects of education are briefly reviewed in this chapter. Both the structure of the learning environment and the teaching methods that are used determine how learning is promoted. Despite the diversity of educational systems, most education has historically been rooted in teaching techniques based on the transferral of facts and memorization. While such practices continue to exist in many places, they have been challenged by contemporary learning theories. The availability of diverse formats for learning, such as informal, non-formal and formal education, has contributed to changing who has access to education. Social media have also influenced how youth learn by altering the manner in which they acquire and process information. Diverse monitoring, testing and ranking have been employed in order to control the direction in which education evolves.

Purpose

Systems of education have had varied cultural, religious, nationalistic and/ or economic objectives. The motivating purposes behind these divergent systems have not always been obvious. But, stated or covert, the disparity of intentions has resulted in a myriad of different approaches that make defining quality education a difficult task.

As Émile Durkheim (1858– 1917) explained, the need for social cohesion has always been vital for societies, and education has been used by many as a vehicle to this end. Promoting a shared sense of belonging has been instrumental in gaining the loyalty of individuals in a group and creating a willingness to face mutual challenges.

A common good is something that benefits all of society. While governments are legally obliged to deliver education to their citizens, a multitude of private actors are doing so as well. Although this helps some countries to provide more educational services, concerns abound regarding the extent to which non-state actors are profit-making enterprises with low regard for quality or support for disadvantaged groups.

National priorities and international guidance have pointed to the need not only for universal elementary education providing basic literacy and numeracy proficiency, but also for education for sustainable development that encourages knowledge-sharing and that fosters relevant skills and values.

Educational initiatives that attempt to nurture insight leading to greater awareness, trust and respect are increasing. These initiatives focus on socioemotional learning that provide much of the motivation for living sustainably.

Education as a global common good

In addition to being seen as a means of achieving personal and national progress, and as a part of the debates in the 1990s about sustainable development, the principle of education as a common good was relaunched as a humanistic vision rather than a utilitarian or economic one. Education was defined as a process to help individuals and communities develop their personal and collective potential for positive, shared growth. Emphasis was placed on the cultivation of knowledge and skills not only for the individual but also for the mutual interests of society. Considering education as a common good meant that it was an essential part of a society's infrastructure and should be offered to all individuals from pre-primary age until old age, whether or not they had special needs.

Diverse providers

SDG4 builds upon the idea of education as a common good and calls for every country to have 12 years of free, public primary and secondary school of which at least nine years are compulsory. Providing and strengthening education is identified as a responsibility primarily of the state but also of private investors and civil society organizations. While 89 per cent of those questioned in global surveys in 2020 responded that the main responsibility for providing education rested with governments, acceptance of the role of non-state actors as providers of educational services has been growing (UNESCO 2021b).

Education develops organically rather than along a linear path. Complicated and controversial, it evolves slowly. As discussed in the first parts of this book, the factors affecting the evolution of education are many. Acknowledgement of the interrelated and interdependent nature of the global society is not yet universal. Alienation from the environment and from other people has caused extensive harm and created conditions that are difficult to repair. The challenges of climate change and disease put uncompromising demands on society and on education as well. The fragmentation of responsibility concerning the needs of society and the environment impedes progress. Economic ambitions and preoccupation with profit have moulded the present shape of education. Education has become a means of boosting productivity and market competitiveness, minimizing unemployment through developing an adaptive and qualified labour force, and creating an environment for innovation in a world dominated by global competition. The countries of the world with the largest economies and highest rates of education are paradoxically those whose education systems continue to produce graduates who support societies that acerbate climate change. The media with its subtle manipulation of public opinion continues to focus on conflict and strife, luxury and overconsumption. Personal and social prejudices, habits and fears restrict the ability to be open to alternative ways of thinking and living and to accept the need for greater unity in diversity. Many of the methodologies still in use by teachers in parts of the world have been criticized as being inadequate to promote among learners constructive, critical thinking and collective consultation. A general lack of interdisciplinary training and systems thinking has been cited as undermining many teachers’ ability to help students appreciate the interconnectedness of modern society and the complexities of sustainable development. Teachers do not necessarily regard themselves as active agents together with students and communities in the processes of co-constructing new knowledge about environmental stewardship. Some educational systems fail to provide teachers with the support and autonomy needed in order to engage both with individual students and society at large.

Physical and psychological barriers make catalysing constructive change difficult – be it in relation to education or to sustainable development in general. Certain conditions and attitudes act as brakes, stopping initiatives even at the initial stage of identifying the challenge. These can be described in general while many of the barriers to educational reform stem from the complex educational landscape and the downplayed drivers and diluted processes of learning.

Habits are the antithesis of change. Habits shape a person's life and are hard to modify. Identifiable as firmly established neurological patterns in the brain, habits are, according to neuroscientists, ways for the brain to save effort. New experiences demand concentration and take energy. The effort-saving instinct in humans makes the brain more efficient and able to carry out many activities almost automatically. Habits are deeply embedded in social and institutional contexts and strongly influenced by fluctuations in nature as well as by commercially controlled algorithms that have appeared with the development of advanced data systems. Despite good intentions, individuals and systems tend to be “locked into” unsustainable, habitual behaviours (Jackson 2005).

Yet habits, whether they are personal or are ways in which education is implemented, can be changed, and fixed patterns replaced with new ones. New habits are established when a person or organization internalizes something that they have learned and repeats the associated behaviour a sufficient number of times. This involves a process requiring cues, routines, incentives, support groups, rewards and time (Duhigg 2012).

Whereas many individual teachers have already adjusted their habits and embraced the tenets of education for sustainable development, educational systems take longer to change their habits and assimilate new ways of functioning. This is not only due to operational inertia but also to the fact that educational reform must also be accepted by parents and society at large.

Some barriers to change arise from natural conditions. The environmental crisis has brought with it floods, droughts and fires that have ruined homes, schools and infrastructure. The Covid-19 pandemic unexpectedly impacted billions of lives and disrupted education around the globe.

Clashes of interest rather than awareness of mutuality of interests is, in economic terms, referred to as the tragedy of the commons and tends to serve as a major constraint on initiatives for change. Wars persist many places causing death and destruction, damaging infrastructures and economies, and disrupting education.

At best, learning is a voyage from wonder to wisdom, a journey from innocence to insight. Learning blazes the trail to individual integrity and, potentially, to global unity. Education, the systematized process of learning, is regarded as a means of empowering the disenfranchised and catalysing human development. Identified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a fundamental human right, education is considered essential for the exercise of all other human rights.

However, existing educational systems – their structures, contents and methodologies – are as diverse as the foliage in a jungle and, for many people, as scarce as shade in a desert. At its worst, education has been a vehicle for propaganda, indoctrination and maintaining the status quo. Outdated methods, poorly trained teachers, irrelevant content, insufficient resources and unequal access have, among other things, contributed to education being unable to adequately meet the urgent needs of a world characterized by complexity, contention and change.

Today, education focuses largely on achieving economic progress for individuals and nations rather than developing integrity and global solidarity with people, nature and future generations. Access to education is not yet universal. In many schools, the basic elements of learning are poorly mobilized causing the effectiveness of education to be severely diminished. Repeated demands have been made for significant changes in education in order to enable individuals and communities to counteract the entropy that threatens the world at present. The call for a global movement based upon a new social contract for education has been raised by people around the globe.

Despite many serious setbacks, numerous efforts are being made to implement reforms in education. Instead of viewing education as an immutable activity, new educational paradigms have been emerging. Lifelong learning for all has become an accepted principle. Education for sustainable development has been promoted in order to spur responsible, environmentally friendly behaviour. Interdisciplinarity has gained momentum. Digital learning has entered the stage with force. Global citizenship education, while still infrequent, is no longer shunned. Collaborative, explorative education is taking shape – education that regards each person as a mine rich in gems and the collective process of the discovery of new understanding as one carried out not only for the benefit of each individual but for all of humanity.