Abstract
This contribution analyses the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations Transforming Our World. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 2015) and their relation to education. In a first part, the conception of education, underlying the UN vision, is criticized, since education must be considered as a structured social institution, where the structure greatly influences the whole education process. The second part analyses the positive role of numerous institutions, not directly aiming at education, but rather at culture, and being part of the digital revolution. This analysis leads me to propose an education for sustainable development which takes advantage of the world’s digitalization. Balancing the over-centralized existing systems, the relevance to the needs, the participative character and the adaptability of these tools offer new perspectives for the future.
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Notes
- 1.
The history of the Sociology of Education could be written as a quest to explain the sources of exclusion and inequity; what accounts for the persistent socio-economic differences in educational opportunity (access) and educational outcome (achievement)? Hundreds of thousands of books and articles have been devoted to these issues, without making decisive progress.
- 2.
I have traced these developments for England, France, Denmark and Russia in an 800 page book (Archer 2013), but have not space to enter into their history here.
- 3.
This move is documented in my chapter (Archer 2008).
- 4.
I have analysed the ‘May events’ of 1968 in these terms (Archer 1972).
- 5.
Donati and Colozzi (2006), p. 38. See also pp. 110–113.
- 6.
Tomlinson (2001, p. 35).
- 7.
Headlines in the Wall Street Journal at the end of 2015 read: ‘International student cohort in the US sees biggest growth in 35 years’.
- 8.
All quotations in this paragraph come from the University of Warwick’s Official Website (University of Warwick 2015).
- 9.
Cited in Archer (2015) How Agency is Transformed in the Course of Social Transformation. (2015). In: Archer (2015) (ed) Generative Mechanisms Transforming the Social Order. Springer, Dordrecht.
- 10.
‘Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries and landlocked developing countries and small island developing states by 2020’ (see 9.c in SDG 2015).
- 11.
Contents can be checked online at www.sos-schools.org/wikipedia-for-schools.
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Archer, M.S. (2017). Education for Sustainable Development. In: Battro, A., Léna, P., Sánchez Sorondo, M., von Braun, J. (eds) Children and Sustainable Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47130-3_9
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