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Philosophy of education in a new key: Who remembers
Greta Thunberg? Education and environment after
the coronavirus
Petar Jandri
c
a,b
, Jimmy Jaldemark
c
, Zoe Hurley
d
, Brendan Bartram
e
,
Adam Matthews
f
, Michael Jopling
e
, Julia Ma~
nero
g
, Alison MacKenzie
h
, Jones
Irwin
i
, Ninette Rothm€
uller
j
, Benjamin Green
k
, Shane J. Ralston
l
, Olli Pyyhtinen
m
, Sarah Hayes
a
, Jake Wright
n
, Michael A. Peters
k
and Marek Tesar
o
a
Faculty of Education, Health, and Wellbeing, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK;
b
Department of Informatics and Computing, Zagreb University of Applied Sciences, Zagreb, Croatia;
c
Department of Education, Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden;
d
College of Communication and
Media Sciences, Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates;
e
Institute of Education, University of
Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK;
f
School of Education, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK;
g
Department of Art Education, University of Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain;
h
School of Social Sciences, Education and
Social Work, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK;
i
School of Human Development, Institute of Education, Dublin
City University, Dublin, Republic of Ireland;
j
Sociology, Graduate Center at the City University of New York
(CUNY), USA;
k
Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;
l
Wright College, Woolf
University, Valletta Malta;
m
New Social Research, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland;
n
Center for
Learning Innovation, University of Minnesota Rochester, Rochester, MN, USA;
o
Faculty of Education and
Social Work, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
ABSTRACT
This paper explores relationships between environment and education
after the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of philosophy of educa-
tion in a new key developed by Michael Peters and the Philosophy of
Education Society of Australasia (PESA). The paper is collectively written
by 15 authors who responded to the question: Who remembers Greta
Thunberg? Their answers are classified into four main themes and corre-
sponding sections. The first section, ‘As we bake the earth, let’s try and
bake it from scratch’, gathers wider philosophical considerations about
the intersection between environment, education, and the pandemic.
The second section, ‘Bump in the road or a catalyst for structural
change?’, looks more closely into issues pertaining to education. The
third section, ‘If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you’, focuses
to Greta Thunberg’s messages and their responses. The last section,
‘Towards a new (educational) normal’, explores future scenarios and
develops recommendations for critical emancipatory action. The
concluding part brings these insights together, showing that resulting
synergy between the answers offers much more then the sum
of articles’parts. With its ethos of collectivity, interconnectedness, and
solidarity, philosophy of education in a new key is a crucial tool for
development of post-pandemic (philosophy of) education.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 12 August 2020
Accepted 12 August 2020
KEYWORDS
Philosophy of education;
new key; environment;
Covid-19; coronavirus;
pandemic; new normal;
postdigital
CONTACT Petar Jandri
cpjandric@tvz.hr University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK.
ß2020 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY
https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1811678
Introduction
1
(Petar Jandri
c)
In late 2019, then 16-year old Swedish child Greta Thunberg has drawn the whole world into
a heated debate about environmental consequences of capitalism. Following her viral j’ac-
cuse talks, epic sailing trip over the Atlantic, numerous interviews, and strong social media
campaign, Thunberg has achieved what generations of climate scientists failed to achieve –
she brought the question of the environment into almost every home. While Thunberg was
at the peak of her popularity, the world has experienced the largest pandemic of our life-
times. Unsurprisingly, people in all fields, and academic researchers in particular, have
turned our attention to the pandemic. In late February, I wrote an urgent editorial for
Postdigital Science and Education
2
and asked fellow academics to join these efforts, “get out
of our comfort zones, and explore all imaginable aspects of this large social experiment that
the Covid-19 pandemic has lain down in front of us”(Jandri
c, 2020, p. 237).
As we started to explore various aspects of the pandemic, it has become crystal clear that
Covid-19 cannot be thought of in isolation from wider environmental concerns. We are now wit-
nessing fierce discussions about where the virus might have arrived from, and the general agree-
ment seems to be that Covid-19 was transferred to humans from pangolins, bats, or another
form of wildlife –just like many other coronaviruses before it (O’Sullivan, 2020). A considerable
number of authors connect the emergence of Covid-19, and other diseases before it such as
SARS and MERS, to industrial food production and consummation of wildlife (Jordan &
Dickerson, 2020; Wang et al., 2020). Some animals are suspect of spreading of the virus, others
serve as test subjects for medicines and vaccines (Gorman, 2020), and those farmed for food are
deemed ‘essential’as meat-packing facilities remain open at all cost (UFCW, 2020). CO2 emissions
during lockdowns are significantly reduced, and the Internet is flooded by (often fake) images
and videos of wildlife ‘reclaiming’cities and factories (Lewis, 2020). And this is just a tip of the
iceberg of other environmental causes and consequences of the global Covid-19 pandemic, anal-
yses of which are now quickly popping up in academic and non-academic circles.
During the pandemic, people working in various fields have refocused their work to the
immediate threat of, and to the ‘war’against, Covid-19 (Wagener, 2020). Now that the pandemic
has slowly become ‘normalized’in our reality (despite various levels of contagion across coun-
tries, continents, and climate zones), it is the time to shift our attention from immediate struggle
against the pandemic to its long-term relationships with the environment, and to educational
implications of this relationship (Amoo-Adare, 2020; Fuller, 2020;Ma
~
nero, 2020; Peters, Arndt,
et al., 2020; Sturm, 2020). Developed at the peak of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, yet
based on many years of working together, philosophy of education in a new key developed by
Michael Peters and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA) executive provides
important theoretical underpinnings for understanding these relationships. Their work is based
on understanding of these relationships through the concept of interconnectivity
that emerged out of cybernetics, biology, ecology, and network theory. It points to the notion
of non-linear dynamics that follows from the idea that all parts of a system interact with and rely on
one another and that a system is difficult or sometimes impossible to analyze through its individual
parts considered alone. Scientifically, the concept is closely linked to the observer effect and the
butterfly effect where a small change in starting conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes.
(Peters, Arndt, et al., 2020)
Interconnectivity cannot be pondered upon individually, so Michael Peters’invitation to write
this article represents a deep(er) epistemic principle (co-)developed in his other works such as
Knowledge Socialism. The Rise of Peer Production: Collegiality, Collaboration, and Collective
Intelligence (Peters et al., 2021). It is through intellectual interconnectivity between many strands
of inquiry, and through human interconnectivity between 15 authors of this collectively written
article, underpinned but not limited to Peters’philosophy of education in a new key, that we
examine messy and unpredictable, yet hugely important, intersections between education and
2 P. JANDRIĆET AL.
environment after the advent of the coronavirus. More detail about methods and principles
behind this endeavour can be found in previous works of the Editors Collective
3
and its many
publications (see Jandri
c et al., 2017,2019; Peters et al., 2016).
As we bake the earth, let’s try and bake it from scratch
Educational philosophy for a Brave New World (Jimmy Jaldemark)
Inspired by the classic Huxley’s novel Brave New World (1932), Murray et al. (2000) wrote that
“dying swans twisted wings, beauty [are] not needed here”as an observation of the state of the
world around the shift of the millennium. I interpret this line and the song titled ‘Brave New
World’as a warning of a narcissist and dualistic interpretation of humankind’s impact on the
world. Further, dualistic separations between humans and the world could lead to the alienation
of humans’responsibility for how their actions and activities impact the surrounding environ-
ment. In the postdigital society of the 2020s (Jandri
c et al., 2018), the song still delivers a warn-
ing to humankind while the swan –as a symbol of beauty and purity –could enlighten us of
the need for a brave new world built on a balance between human actions and the surrounding
environment. The application of this balance in educational philosophy embraces epistemo-
logical and ontological perspectives built on a dynamic and holistic worldview embracing the
inseparable relationship between human actions and the environment.
Educational scholars such as Dewey and Bentley (1949/1960) discuss such worldview in terms
of being transactional with the emphasis of human actions as being a complex holistic phenom-
enon “composed of inseparable aspects that simultaneously and conjointly define the whole”
(Altman & Rogoff, 1991, p. 24). The work of Bakhtin (1953/1986) and Vygotsky (1934/1987)
emphasizes that human actions also are intertwined in cultural, historical and social processes
linked to the society. These prominent scholars have in common that their worldviews reject any
separations between the mind, the body and the surrounding environment. From this follows
that human action in terms of learning, teaching, or participating in education should focus on
being inseparable from the surrounding environment.
The activity of education should focus on processes that link human actions to former, current
and future states of the society. Such worldviews emphasize education as driver of change at
individual and societal levels. To be able to apply such a dynamic and holistic perspective of the
relationship between humankind and the environment, conceptualisations of education need to
include concepts that embrace such complex worldview. Therefore, concepts applied in educa-
tion should reject the separation of human actions and the environment. In other words, they
should have a complex intersectional character that denies dualistic worldviews by linking vari-
ous aspects to each other.
In earlier work, I have applied such conceptualisation by discussing human action as a boundless
phenomenon (e.g., Jaldemark, 2010,2012) or hybrid (e.g., Jaldemark, 2020; Jaldemark &
€
Ohman,
2020). This work has rejected dualistic concepts such as interaction and learning environment.
Following the footsteps of Dewey and Bentley (1949/1960), these concepts link to dualistic inter-
actional worldviews that separate human actions from the surrounding environment. The applica-
tion of these concepts in education includes dividing the environment into several separated
environments –e.g. biological, geographical, learning, online, offline, and social –instead of apply-
ing a holistic worldview that emphasises human actions as a complex phenomenon embracing
links to several aspects of the environment (Jaldemark, 2010,2012). In short, by conceptualising
education as a complex holistic phenomenon –embracing human actions and activities as insepar-
able from the surrounding environment –we might find a fruitful approach to save the dying swan,
restore the beauty, and revitalise the role of education in a postdigital society.
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 3
Learning to breathe (Zoe Hurley)
Covid-19 has turned the world upside-down and politicians’serial broadcasts about the pan-
demic have been illogical yet distracting. Like the coronavirus, the spread of fake-news, and con-
spiracy theories are rapidly contagious. Capitalism responds to the crisis shrewdly and Amazon,
for example, is expanding into telemedicine as ‘Alexa’listens to coughs and answers questions
about the pandemic (Dumaine, 2020). During lockdown cleaner air, nature and other species
began to flourish but, for subjects of hyper-inequalities, there is no respite from bad information.
The last words of murdered George Floyd, “I can’t breathe”, is the slogan of the Covid-19 gener-
ation in the grip of ‘viral modernity’(Peters, Jandri
c et al., 2020). This concept refers to viral infor-
mation as pharmakon (Derrida, 1981), offering cures while prescribing toxic remedies. This
malinformation turn is the signature of the postdigital condition, involving the merging of off-
line/online phenomena (Jandri
c et al., 2018).
Greta Thunberg’s pleas to conserve the planet are yet to be addressed adequately by govern-
ments and big business lacking vested interests in sustainability, despite corporate environmen-
talism or greenwashing. Thunberg reasons that the only way to avoid climate catastrophe is to
abandon today’s political and economic systems and reach for science (Rowlatt, 2020). But, for
all the followers Thunberg attracts, there are climate sceptics that she irritates. For some, Greta is
a symbol of white privilege, posing an ampersand problem in obscuring racial and class inequal-
ities within the climate crisis (Spelman, 1990). Furthermore, the environmental emergency, des-
pite the temporary ‘anthropause,’is at a scale that cannot be resolved by individuals. Part of the
problem is that the field of science itself has been infected through the ‘infodemic,’or spread of
emotive and rancid discourse (Peters, McLaren, & Jandri
c, 2020; Peters, Jandri
c, & McLaren, 2020).
The White Queen, in ‘Through the Looking-Glass,’informs Alice, that “[t]he rule is, jam to-mor-
row and jam yesterday - but never jam to-day”(Carroll, 1871, p. 53). This is on par with Donald
Trump’s illogic about testing and vaccines. Thunberg wisely urges us to learn to care for the
planet now through science. Yet, we must also consider that the scientific issues, being given
oxygen, stem from techno-politics’algorithms of debate (Jandri
c, 2017). Science tells us only part
of the story and we should be wary of arts and humanities being pushed to the brink of extinc-
tion. Their loss will be detrimental to broader learning about ecosystems. We need critical cap-
acity to interpret data, diagnose symptoms of malinformation and theorise how climate crisis
and other political matters are enmeshed within discursive warfare.
Empirical, exploratory and expressive education, for thinking about the pandemic’s interrela-
tionship with the environment and climate of malinformation, need not be at cross-roads.
Effective interdisciplinary education isn’t only delivery of more information, since we have so
much, even too much. Setting education in a new key could harmonise interdisciplinary episte-
mologies, collective thinking and open science (Peters, Arndt, et al., 2020). Philosophy of educa-
tion can contest techno-solutionism and develop methodologies for filtering conceptual spam. It
could also breathe life, albeit human, artificial or other, into transdisciplinary environmental and
ethical learning.
‘Next please …’ – issues, media and education (Brendan Bartram)
As we are all acutely aware, the Covid-19 pandemic has dominated our lives in recent months.
Although its effects have been differently experienced, it has affected us all personally, profes-
sionally, economically and psychologically in ways that are too numerous and diverse to discuss
here. It has preoccupied us so much in fact that it has eclipsed many issues –including environ-
mental concerns –while at the same time shining a harsh light on certain others, perhaps most
disturbingly classed and ethnic inequalities and domestic violence. The relentless media focus on
the virus was of course only to be expected –we live in highly mediatised societies dominated
by 24-hour TV news channels competing for coverage, and social media platforms that
4 P. JANDRIĆET AL.
perpetuate and publicise the endless reporting of individuals’views and experiences. We are all
familiar with the ‘themed’ebb and flow involved here –whatever constitutes the ‘current’public
media fixation is echoed and amplified in social media, and sometimes vice versa.
In this sense, Greta Thunberg provides an interesting example. Her high-profile media inter-
ventions generated fresh and growing interest in long-standing environmental concerns; by
inserting herself at the centre of the story, whether through social media spats with President
Trump or televised talks at the UN, she successfully mediatised and reinvigorated a global focus
on environmental matters. As the Covid-19 pandemic illustrates, however, the media will always
jump on to the next story; so suddenly, the environment seems a little like yesterday’s news –
except perhaps where it connects with new angles on the consequences of the Coronavirus.
And several months into the outbreak, there are already burgeoning signs of Corona fatigue, as
media attention gradually shifts to new issues –the global spread of Black Lives Matter; ensuing
debates on the statues of historical figures; and writing in the UK in June 2020 - following an
‘Islamist’attack which resulted in the deaths of three gay men (Milton, 2020) - renewed concerns
about terrorism and attitudes towards the LGBT community.
This is nothing new of course –the media always move on. My fear, however, is that our edu-
cational priorities appear to be increasingly linked to whatever happens to be the current topic
of media interest. I completely understand calls to keep important issues at the heart of educa-
tion. While I also recognise that topical matters invite educational consideration, I have concerns
about the ways in which public expectations manipulated by media fixations can dictate a con-
veyor belt of educational responses to issues. This is not to trivialise the importance of any of
these issues –they are all of huge significance. But there will always be a new story, and while
we as educators need to be responsive to contemporary concerns, we also need to be respon-
sible, and find balanced ways of embedding a sustained –and indeed sustainable - focus on var-
ied matters of shared perennial significance within our curricula.
Bump in the road or a catalyst for structural change? (Adam Matthews)
A critical question for education and society is whether the pandemic is a temporary bump in
the road with a temporary fix or whether the Covid-19 pandemic will be the catalyst for struc-
tural change. Pre-pandemic, a discourse dominated of technology being able to “fix”education
with the latest Silicon Valley innovation in the “smarter university”(Williamson, 2018). The thrust
of technology and its promise was amplified in March 2020 and rather than disrupting educa-
tion, technology became palliative (Selwyn et al., 2020). Palliative care is something which has
characterised many activities in education. The symptoms were treated rather than the structural
cause. Resilience, grit and mindfulness, just some of the sticking plasters and pain killers that
have got us through. “Mindfulness lets us escape our challenges briefly: Meditate on your cogni-
tive or bodily challenges or avoid them altogether by going to Stand-up Paddle-board yoga
class.”(Jackson in Peters, Arndt, et al., 2020, p. 4).
The environment in its broadest sense is an ecology of humans, nature and culture which if
we remove or at least open up the divisions of modernity (Latour, 1993), can move us towards a
co-existing environment with the human embedded as part of and not battling for control over
the environment. Posthumanism is an opportunity for affirmative politics, combining critique
with creativity for alternative visions (Braidotti, 2013). Treating the symptoms in siloed disciplin-
ary echo chambers is not enough. There has been a recent resurgence of the idea of interdiscip-
linary education (Chye, 2020; Staufenberg, 2019)
4
. This idea rings true with Peters, Rizvi, et al.
(2020) and the idea of harmonic cadence, interconnectedness in collective intentionality in the
project of philosophy of education in a new key.
Interdisciplinary education as an abstract concept looks to investigate the world, including
the human, the cultural and natural environment and is a structural change which holds
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 5
promise. The theory holds strong, but the practice is complex. This practice is highlighted by
Fuller (Fuller & Jandri
c, 2019, p. 200), with refreshing pragmatism “there’s more stuff than can be
reasonably read”, specialisation is common and current structures mean we cannot know if our
question has already been answered. Multi/inter/trans disciplinarity have been studied and theor-
ised to offer us theoretical starting points (Choi & Pak, 2006).
In a pre-Covid world there was the science wars of the 1990s, postmodern criticisms of ‘flat earth-
ers’, an historic divide between teaching and research activity within the university, a neoliberal iron
cage of measurement and quantification of siloed disciplines, specialist publishing and funding, social
media echo chambers and institutional structures and competition. These are the practical structural
boundaries which need to be overcome to achieve a true collective and harmony of the human in,
and part of the environment. To truly move beyond the palliative to the transformational, we may
rethink the idea of a university. This is not a new question and one in which Newman answered in
1852. For Newman (1852), the very word, ‘university’comes from the word universal and universal
knowledge beyond organisational structures should be the aim of the university.
Rupture and conjuncture: education and the climate crisis (Michael Jopling)
In his preface to the 35
th
anniversary edition of Policing the Crisis (Hall et al., 2013, p. xv), Stuart
Hall emphasises the importance of “conjuncture”, a term derived from Gramsci and Althusser
which “refers to a period when the antagonisms and contradictions, which are always at work in
society, begin to ‘fuse’into a ruptural unity”. The two conjunctures the book identifies in a
British context are the creation of the social democratic welfare state in 1945 and its decline
from the late 1960s. The crisis prompted by Covid-19, which can be regarded as both a symptom
and a precursor of environmental catastrophe, may represent another rupture. If that is the case,
the implications for education will be considerable.
How could we rethink schools in the light of the lockdown experience is the final open ques-
tion in an opportunistic online survey of 147 school leaders (so far) in the North East of England
we are currently undertaking to explore their responses to stress and particularly the Covid-19
lockdown. Here I want to highlight only three issues which are particularly relevant to climate
emergency. The first issue is reduction:“I think we need to slow everything down and stop
cramming our curriculum and give more time to us as a community and our wellbeing”(primary
headteacher). In England at least, education policy has long been obsessed with scaling up, opti-
misation, maximisation, and achieving excellence. Shifting our focus to the local, reducing the
pace of life and prioritising wellbeing over achievement are ways in which we might begin to
contain our needs and live with, rather than in opposition to, the natural world.
The second issue is trust, as another primary headteacher identified: “Professional trust is a
huge issue. I do not think testing represents the ‘whole’child and for some it hugely affects their
mental health and wellbeing”. This again shows how Covid-19 has necessarily elevated the
importance of wellbeing and indicates how governments had no choice but to trust that schools
would look after the most vulnerable children and young people competently. It should be diffi-
cult (if not impossible) to reverse this. Trust operates in opposition to the antagonising post-
truth epistemologies (Peters et al., 2018) that have been exposed by the existential threats of
Covid-19 and climate crisis.
Most predictably, but no less importantly, the final issue is learning, highlighted by a third
primary headteacher: “Focus on building capacity for a love of learning. Those who love learning
have clearly been more proactive with home learning than those who aren’t”. Developing an
independent love for learning is part of developing learners’self-sufficiency, which stands in
opposition to instrumentalist conceptualisations of learning as a preparation for economic prod-
uctivity. It is important to note that just as climate activism is led by the young, these issues
were all highlighted by primary school headteachers. Reculturing their schools (Miller, 1998) will
6 P. JANDRIĆET AL.
be crucial if the Covid-19 and climate ruptures are to lead to a conjuncture driven more by the
humanisation and collectivity central to ‘philosophy of education in a new key’(Peters, Arndt,
et al., 2020) than the divisions of populism and nationalism.
Educational lessons from global emergencies: towards non-human superiority
(Julia Ma~
nero)
Even in the half light
We can see that something’s gotta give
[…]
When we watched the markets crash
The promises we made were torn
(Arcade Fire, 2010)
Since the inception and dissemination of Covid-19 outside Chinese borders, the media agenda
has been limited to Covid-related news. The drama spread, concern for basic necessities esca-
lated, and grocery stores and businesses witnessed an unprecedented shortage of supplies.
Meanwhile, people were still drowning in the Mediterranean, Turks and Syrians were still fight-
ing, civilian populations were still dying, and the environment continued to suffer the conse-
quences of an aggressive economic system.
Analysing educational practices and policies requires a review with respect to the situations
experienced. The coronavirus –as well as the environmental crisis–are both derived from a pro-
ductive system lacking in ethics, morals and a sense of the common good. What do we need to
achieve in order to to reflect on possible sustainable alternatives that are respectful of and in
solidarity with the environment and others?
The coronavirus crisis has also enabled a series of ideological viruses that some philoso-
pherssuchasSlavoj
Zi
zek (2020) believe can open windows to alternative ways of thinking,
updating society towards solidarity and global cooperation. For this it is necessary to recog-
nize viral modernity in which we are immersed (Peters, Jandri
cetal.,2020). In this way, we
claim that there are biological viruses but also digital viruses and even attest that capital
forms a viral entity (
Zi
zek, 2020).
The pandemic comes to resemble a natural response, due to the mistreatment and
deregulated neoliberal actions on the planet for the sake of human benefit (Harvey, 2020)or
as Han (2020) states, the pandemic is the result of a globalization and liberalization that
allows the flow of material and immaterial capital without precedent. In this way the fragility
of the current ideological system is manifested. It is becoming evident that scientific pro-
gress is not directly proportional to human and moral progress: without ethical progress
there is no real progress (Markus, 2020).
It is paradoxical to refer to a hypothetical ’progress’when the concept goes hand in hand
with economic productivity. Health cuts, austerity policies and corruption, in which research for
the prevention of possible diseases has no place because it is not profitable in economic terms.
As a result, a simple and exemplary manifestation of neoliberal ideology is being addressed:
maximizing profits to the detriment of collective welfare (Polychroniou, 2020). The pandemic has
resulted in a mishmash in which natural, economic and cultural processes are totally intertwined
and interrelated (
Zi
zek, 2020) resulting in a non-human superiority.
The global disasters that we are suffering –in terms of education –have not only generated
new issues but have also highlighted in a striking way those inconsistencies that we have been
reproducing in recent years. An educational system that was –and still is to a great extent –
under market control, bets on productivity and adaptation to the system. There is a need to
reclaim in the classroom the time for reflection, pause, criticism, to avoid productivity and instru-
mentalization as the main objective of the educational system.
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 7
Education is politics and has a primary function to transform the world or to reproduce it
(Esca~
no, 2018). If we bet on the first, and if we advocate for an active, participatory and demo-
cratic citizenship, we need a committed postdigital critical pedagogy that encourages both cre-
ativity and imaginative thinking. One aim of such pedagogy is to destroy the social assumption
of human superiority and the binary thinking of human/non-human (Peters, Rizvi, et al., 2020).
The market and its invisible laissez-faire logic has collapsed, revealing its limits and fore-
seeing some of the effects and collateral damage on nature and humanity. Hopefully,
humanity won’t need another global disaster to realize that human beings are such a small
piece in the universe.
Do animals have complex mental lives? (Alison MacKenzie)
Do animals have complex mental lives? Sceptics would immediately dismiss this as a nonsense
question: animals (except, perhaps, great apes) lack intelligence, cannot engage in conceptual
thought, and are not, therefore, morally significant entities about whom we should show con-
cern. Animals, especially those we eat or trophy hunt, are regarded as resources for our susten-
ance and enjoyment, as mere means, as practically inanimate –unless we favour them, in which
case, dogs, cats and parrots will probably lead flourishing lives.
The cognition of animals may not be sophisticated, lacking, as they do, the experience to
draw on critical reasoning to reflect on the events taking place such as habitat destruction or
being tied to the bars of a cramped cage. But this does not mean they passively accept the real-
ity before them. Seligman’s(1975) work on animal helplessness in laboratories, fear and depres-
sion rests on a theory of contingency (lack of control in the environment), which Seligman
interprets as the way the animal ‘represents’the world to itself’and behaviour. We cannot
understand, he argues, animal behaviour unless we grant that they have cognitive representa-
tions of that world: the animal’s helplessness is learned behaviour and depression is a result of
the creature’s realisation that it has no control over the pain stimulus.
Mary Midgley (1995 [1979]) asks what we mean by conceptual thought. While the upper
reaches of conceptual thought belong to the human species, and no gorilla thinks of relativity
theory (and neither do many humans, she quips), what are the lower limits of conceptual
thought? Dolphins, elephants and apes can make up games or invent new tricks on the spot.
Midgley (1995 [1979]) cites the example of Jane Goodall’s chimp, Washoe, who regards himself
as an “honorary person”but, using cards, classifies other chimps as “black bugs”. Does this imply
conceptual understanding of the difference between species and self-hood? The evidence points
strongly towards the affirmative. What these examples from the animal world show is that inten-
tionality, rich mental phenomena, need not be the sole preserve of the human animal.
Beliefs about the environment affect our choices and behaviours. If we cannot or are
unable to accept that systematically damaging the environment or harming animals is ser-
iously morally wrong, we will continue with the damage. There is ample evidence of our
growing global problems, growing health impacts, and trauma to animals –but we resist,
cocooning ourselves in wilful or blissful ignorance. We are more likely to respond if we nur-
ture ethically inspired beliefs that harming the environment is a serious moral wrong and
that animals do feel and do feel despair, fear, helplessness and depression. Brutal, careless
and indifferent treatment, and lack of respect for non-human species, will cost us dearly, as
Covid-19 has surely revealed.
How do we get humans to restrain themselves? To learn to respect, to treat with awe and
wonder, the environment in which they live? This is no easy task since we rarely have direct con-
trol over systemic beliefs that have been nourished since early childhood. We can’t simply rely
on schools: curricula is overcrowded and teachers are tasked with so much already. To change
beliefs, we need evidence that is relentlessly factual and truthful, and fearlessly presented;
8 P. JANDRIĆET AL.
governments must treat seriously the evidence and act positively; industry must become advo-
cates for the environment; at all levels apathy and scepticism must be challenged; and we must
cultivate appropriate degrees of scepticism and suspicion about challenges against environmen-
tal protection. And we must consider - animal rights.
If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you
5
Can philosophy of education (and the university) change for the better by listening to
Greta and youth voice? (Jones Irwin)
Those of us who work in the contemporary university are acutely aware of its manifest deficiencies
as a place which supposedly values progressive thought and a connect to positive social change.
While we can recognise many great colleagues and many great policies in principle, the possibility
of progressive change is all too often stultified by poor leadership, nepotism, lack of vision and a
disconnect from social and political transformative forces. Similarly, the discipline of the philosophy
of education whilst having resituated itself especially in the 1990s (under the influence of Critical
Theory particularly) as more focused on the socio-political dimensions of schooling, nonetheless
often keeps an abstract distance from contemporary social movements for change. In this context,
I warmly welcome the project of ’Philosophy of Education in a New Key’(Peters, Arndt, et al.,
2020) as a project of collective intentionality and collective solidarity. It allows the possibility for
more organic thought and praxis amongst philosophers and in the wider university as a way of
bridging the aforementioned democratic deficit of much third level pedagogy.
If we need an inspiring paradigm for such an endeavour, we need look no further than Greta
Thunberg. As Jandri
c(2020) has argued, Greta’s iconoclastic critical interventions have demon-
strated to us that the crisis of Covid-19 from an educational perspective can only be addressed
through a focus on environmental change and sustainability. Greta’s own speeches on this issue,
collected together under the title No One Is Too Small to Make A Difference (Thunberg, 2019b)
call attention starkly again and again to our responsibility and guilt in allowing our planet to be
nearly destroyed on front of our very eyes whilst we stay silent and do nothing.
I was lucky and privileged for five years (2015–2019) to work as Project Officer with new state
primary schools in Ireland which were seeking to develop pluralist school environments and cur-
ricula in the context of an overarching Christian faith school system (NCCA, 2018). There I
encountered and worked with Muslim, Hindu, Pagan, Atheist and Agnostic (as well as Christian)
parents and children. This experience taught me the alienation which many people feel in our
current education system as well as a tendency to patronising such people amongst our educa-
tional establishment. Greta’s calls for change have met with similar resentment and critique
amongst conservative adults. But the experience also taught me that with commitment, open-
ness and collective action, real and progressive change in our educational institutions and practi-
ces remains wholly possible. Erich Fromm (2001) used to warn us of the ’fear of freedom’. Let us
overcome any fears we may still have in terms of the possibility of genuine revolution in our
education and political contexts. Greta has reminded us that the time is urgently now. She has
also shown us the real difference which courage and straight-talking honest critique can have.
What excuse do you have for staying quiet and complicit any longer?
This is not a lullaby
6
(Ninette Rothm€
uller)
“The climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of the imagination.”
(Ghosh, 2016,p.9)
It’s mid-June 2020 when Davide Panizza tucks a giant under one of the largest night-night blan-
kets. It is “100,000 square meters”big (Agence France-Presse, 2020). Fighting for its life and
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 9
looking rather frail the giant has lost one third of its magnitude. Blankets and lullabies won’t
help. I bet that the giant will die during my seven-year-old daughter’s lifetime. Frankly, most of
us won’t miss him. In the summer he hibernates tucked in tightly. During the remaining three
seasons humans cover the giant’s skin with signatures of their pleasure; putting pressure upon
it, squeezing its flesh. He is combed —stroke after stroke, like paint brush strokes —leaving
streaks, as sharp as cuts, on the surface of its body. The giant’s name is Presena. Presena is an
Italian glacier. It wasn’t the late Christo’s idea to cover it.
Bake it from scratch
It’s mid-April 2020 and Rosina Phillipe’s pail is full; as are the canals. I have a feeling we are not
in Italy anymore, a voice in my head whispers. Accurate: this is Grand Bayou and the canals in
question had been dug by oil and gas companies. What’s in Phillipe’s pail? “The history of
cohabitation, the history of the knowledge of place, of belonging.”(Phillipe in Yeoman, 2020)At
Grand Bayou the table is set to dine. Phillipe, an elder of the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe,
shares “We’re like place markers on the table [.] waiting for everybody else to come and dine.”
(Phillipe in Yeoman, 2020) The Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe has neither state nor federal recog-
nition. With tribal sovereignty not being protected fighting “land loss and natural disaster”is
challenged by the lack of resources and protection (Smith, 2020). Like other tribes Phillipe’s com-
munity faces climate forced displacement.
On June 20 The Guardian quotes Greta Thunberg: “The climate and ecological crisis cannot
be solved within today’s political and economic systems.”(Thunberg in Murray, 2020)Aswe
bake it (the earth that is) we need to bake it from scratch. Politics have to be homemade (as in,
challenged from within the private sphere) from within communities.
Get it moving
It’s just over mid-life in my life. Am I having a crisis? Yes! Humans have overconsumed life.
“Humanity is in a state of debt.”(UNESCO, 2019: 7) Every parent on this plant will bequeath that
debt to their children. In fact, the question is “whether there will be future generations”(Jonas,
2016). Still singing lullabies? Nothing humans do is (climate) neutral; not even singing lullabies.
Referencing refugee philosopher Hans Jonas (in Pawlikowski, 2016) wrote: “Ethics must become
part of the fabric of the future as well as of the present.”If so, why do we not “think what we
are doing”? (Arendt, 1998, p. 5) During the Covid-19 pandemic what do we dream of? Skiing,
going for a drive, gardening on land as if no blood was shed on it and no-one had been dis-
placed from it, serving salmon for dinner
7
and after a day of fun, tucking our little ones in, sing-
ing a lullaby, as if there indeed was a tomorrow? What tomorrow? You tell me. The pandemic is
a chance to refocus. I advocate following Arendt’s request —wherever and whoever you are. It’s
everyone’s turn. Let’s change climate politics from scratch; every body! It will need everyone’s
doing and everyone’s imagination. Imagining with each other; not against.
Lest we forget: psychological trauma, collective irrationality and political activism during
the age of Covid-19 (Benjamin Green)
For years, scholars have labelled climate change as the single gravest threat to the continued
survival of the human race. In fact, 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that recent
climate-warming trends are attributable to human activities (Hoffman, 2015; NASA, 2020). Why is
it then that no amount of expert scientific coverage has been able to balkanize a lasting critical
(see: revolutionary) mass of global support for climate-based socio-political reforms? George
Marshall (2015) suggests that this collective pathology of wilful disregard, even in the face of
10 P. JANDRIĆET AL.
repeated climate-born disasters, stems from the fact that climate change represents a somewhat
distant and abstract threat, one which fails to mobilize our common psychology of risk –a
psychology which signals our instincts to protect our family and tribe.
This sentiment has been echoed by Dr. Aaron Bernstein, director of the C-Change program at
Harvard’s Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment. Bernstein states that while pan-
demics such as Covid-19 represent a scary and immediate threat to ourselves, our families and
our way of life, “hitting all the go buttons”that signal our psychology of risk, climate change -
as an impersonal and distant “armageddon in slow motion”- does not (Harvard, 2020). While
this notion may account somewhat for society’s conveniently sporadic amnesia towards an
impending climate change apocalypse, it doesn’t quite tell the whole story. Specifically, this
notion doesn’t account for why voting blocs in the US’most vulnerable (to increasingly prevalent
volatile weather emergencies) regions continue to vote against potential climate champions
(Marshall, 2015). Moreover, within the US, this disregard cannot simply be chalked up to partisan-
ship, as both the 2016 election and 2018 midterm election exit polls show that neither
Democrat nor Republican voters ranked climate change among their top electoral concerns
(Dolsak & Prakash, 2020).
In order to understand why climate change elicits this wilful disregard from many within con-
temporary society, we must first understand how and why a rising global Covid-19 body count
failed to signal an appropriately universal psychology of risk within the US. As a point of fact,
within the US, public perception is overwhelmingly shaped by and highly contingent upon an
authoritative ‘elite’political narrative. Specifically, in early February, at the height of Trump’s
downplaying of the threat of Covid-19, public opinion echoed this official narrative, with only
23% of polled voters labelling Covid-19 as a “severe threat”to public health, with this number
surging to 62% in mid-march when Trump gave an oval office address declaring Covid-19 a
national health emergency (Yokley, 2020). This highlights the fact that, despite overwhelming
evidence from the global health community, which clearly labelled Covid-19 as a grave threat to
personal health and safety, many in the US still displayed a wilful disregard to a pandemic that
should have triggered a collective psychology of risk.
In assessing this phenomenon, psychologist Bryant Welch (2008/2018) proffers the notion that
the capacity for rational thought within increasingly atomized modern societies has been weak-
ened by decades of psychological trauma. Moreover, this trauma continues to be readily
exploited by both the news media - in their despondent coverage of war, terrorism, economic
decline, racial discord, pandemics, immigration etc., and political ideologues - who greedily prey
on the collective vulnerabilities of an anxious, fearful and confused populace. Feeding on the col-
lective irrationality exhibited within the fractured realities and weakened decision-making cap-
acity of societies suffering from deep psychological trauma, politicians are keen to provide
simplistic (fanciful) narratives which salve the wounded psyche of a voting public in desperate
need of clarity and certainty (Welch, 2008/2018).
In light of this, scholars must seek to address climate change in a way that elicits a de-atomiz-
ing sense of hopeful collective intentionality, action and responsibility (Gallotti & Huebner, 2017;
Peters, Arndt, et al., 2020), Zaibert, 2003; rather than signalling a pathological retreat into siloed
partisan apathy and collective socio-political escapism. Finally, although global society has begun
to normalize a future with Covid-19, it is imperative that the public begins to understand that
threats to the environment, climate change and pandemics like Covid-19, while intimately con-
nected, are both personal and actionable (Harvard, 2020). Thus, as we reclaim our rightful trad-
ition of collective revolutionary social activism (as evinced by the diverse and overwhelmingly
peaceful global protests against systemic racism) (Ankel, 2020), scholars must orient future cli-
mate change scholarship towards this resurgence in political activism by fomenting within our
current global risk society a hopeful ethos of community in support of the greater global good
(Green, 2020).
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 11
Covid-19 and the myth of nature’s revenge (Shane J. Ralston)
If ideas help us evolve through so-called memotypic (as opposed to phenotypic or genotypic)
variance, then Greta Thunberg has truly assisted the evolution of the human species. She gave
voice to the idea of generational environmental betrayal, or that future generations would never
forgive the current adult generation for ignoring a climatic emergency: “[T]he young people are
starting to understand your [contemporary world leaders’] betrayal. The eyes of all future genera-
tions are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.”
(Thunberg, 2019a)
Thunberg taught us to fear the threat of disappointed future generations. Whether gener-
ational environmental betrayal is true or mythical, the objective is nevertheless the same: to pro-
voke (or inspire) monumental behavioural and policy change for the sake of averting an
imminent environmental catastrophe. As the Covid-19 pandemic descended upon us, our collect-
ive imagination was consumed by the idea of a combined environmental apocalypse/health cri-
sis. Again, whether it was true or mythical, the point of invoking the idea was to catalyse change
on a grand scale. Some environmentalists warned that Mother Earth was exacting retribution on
the human species, for polluting her air, her soil and her oceans. To punish us, she brought
plague and death to all corners of the globe. The time was ripe for “nature’s revenge”
(Valliantos, 2020).
By tying the threat of environmental catastrophe to a global health emergency, environmen-
talists wielded a truly pragmatic environmental rhetoric. They had harnessed the myth of
nature’s revenge. Anthropomorphizing flora/fauna, ecosystems and the biosphere as vengeful
forces punishing humanity might not be truthful, but it is especially effective. The mythical narra-
tive communicates the urgency of imminent environmental apocalypse. It incites fear, recruiting
the emotion as a driver to change humans’unsustainable behavior. Covid-19 and the myth of
nature’s revenge changed behaviour on a massive scale. People drove their carbon-emitting
vehicles less. Some hoarded, but many, as a result of shortages, became more discerning con-
sumers. The air quality improved. Global CO2 emissions dropped.
In my book Pragmatic Environmentalism: Towards a Rhetoric of Eco-Justice (Ralston, 2013), I
introduced the notion of the inadvertent environmentalist, the individual who acts in environ-
mentally responsible ways, without the intention to do so, only because economic factors push
and pull her to act thusly, given otherwise selfish motivations. Behavioural economists (e.g.,
Ostrom, 2010) are well aware that incentives and constraints can be intelligently designed for
this purpose. What behavioural economists might not be as aware of is the power of myths, as
well as the fears they incite, to incentivize environmentally responsible action (as well as
inaction). If we have learned anything from the intersection between the ideas of generational
environmental betrayal and nature’s revenge, it is that myth-making is an effective way to cata-
lyse mass behavioural change, and we might just evolve as a species because of it.
Towards a new (educational) normal
Covid-19 as educator (Olli Pyyhtinen)
In The Natural Contract, philosopher Michel Serres (1995) suggests that most of our narratives,
philosophy, history, and social science have remained blind to nature. They have only cared for
the actions, communication, and conflicts of human beings and for the spectacle called ‘culture’.
Yet, to grasp the genesis, multiple spatiotemporal scales, and effects of Covid-19 necessitates
that we see it within a larger Umwelt of living organisms and understand the world in which we
live as both a human and a non-human world. Through Covid-19 pandemic the non-human or
more-than-human world of, for example, animals, meat, viruses and their genomes, airborne
12 P. JANDRIĆET AL.
transmission, infections, and diseases reminds us of its presence and participates in shaping and
transforming our lives and relations with fellow humans.
While researchers from various fields –epidemiologists, virologists, mathematicians, health sci-
entists, statisticians, and sociologists, you name it –are working hard to learn as much and as
fast about Covid-19 as possible to halt the pandemic, could there also be something to learn
from it? Could the pandemic teach us something about ourselves and about the possibilities and
potentials of life? In other words, what if we treated Covid-19 as an educator?
Of course, at present it is still too early to know about the many possible teachings of the
pandemic. These will be revealed to us in time, provided that we are open and willing to learn.
If not, we fail to change our prevalent ecological destructive practices. Here I present –in a pre-
liminary manner –two possible teachings of Covid-19 with regard to the environment.
First, Covid-19 may give us a sense of the vast range of our relational world. Networked space
has become our environment (Serres, 1994, p. 203). Covid-19 is a relational hazard that has to do
with relations. It cannot be explained by reference to individual subjects and their goals and
actions. In spite of their possibly good intentions, like personal empathy, individuals may
unknowingly infect a great number of others and spread the disease. Besides Covid-19, SARS-
CoV-2 itself is relational through and through: in addition to originating in relations and spread-
ing through relations, the virus has hit and infected not only our bodies but also our networks,
forcing us to impose such protective measures over human relations as quarantines, lockdowns,
and spatial distancing (see also Pyyhtinen, 2020).
Second, Covid-19 pandemic can tell us how the balance of humanity and nature has been
shaken during the past century. Instead of being ‘there’, as Heidegger suggested with his notion
of Dasein, we, as a world-subject, are rather out-of-there, deterritorialized from the ‘there’of our
existence; humanity has become a global physical variable in the physical system of the planet
Earth (Serres, 1995). While we have become the masters of the world, harnessing and exploiting
natural phenomena, our own mastery escapes our mastery (Serres & Latour, 1995, p. 171). The
main question thus no longer is how to control nature but how to control our own actions that
seem to escape our control. The Covid-19 pandemic is an example of how we are nowadays sub-
jected to and depend on the world that is of our creation. What we produce returns to us in the
form of new givens –pandemics, natural disasters, pollution, waste –conditioning and threaten-
ing our health, relationships, institutions, and mode of life.
Resisting an ‘isolated’McCovid-19 response (Sarah Hayes)
When a group of companies responded to the Covid-19 requirement for self-isolation by produc-
ing socially-distancing logos, this was swiftly criticised for trivialising a crisis (Valinsky, 2020). Yet
such global marketing is hardly surprising given that predictability is a key principle of
McDonaldisation theory, alongside efficiency, calculability, control and the irrationality of rational-
ity (Ritzer et al., 2018). Perhaps as we entered lockdown, amid traffic ceasing, businesses closing
and wildlife returning, we imagined this ‘pause’was also ‘distancing’us from these forms of neo-
liberal rationality? Sadly not.
Instead these commercial logos provide firstly, a reification of ‘social distancing’, by visually
depicting this new ‘condition’to collectively adapt to, for public health. Secondly, the logos
ascribe a set of capitalist values, reinforcing a generalisation that infers that social distancing is
experienced by everyone in a similar, predictable way. Such static representations do not reveal
varied national lockdown timelines, grief, loss, economic hardships, or the role of personal
‘postdigital positionality’(Hayes, 2020) in managing isolation. Social distancing has, for some,
involved home-based work, for others a loss of work, for some a break from travel, for others
more desperate forms of travel (Roy, 2020).
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 13
Even before Covid-19, environmental efforts were being hampered by oversimplifications,
such as ill-defined terms like globalisation being applied as if this were a single condition of the
world. Whilst globalisation may be good for some citizens and bad for others, the rational treat-
ment of the term as evenly experienced across the world conceals a ‘discussion’that is never
had (O’Byrne, 2016, p. 41). It closes down debate on the interplay between global and local dis-
advantage, silencing diverse regional voices (Hayes et al., 2020).
Yet Covid-19 has visibly surfaced starkly uneven suffering globally and locally. A simple return
to the ‘normality’of neoliberal capitalism is now being questioned, given perceived opportunities
for a collective reimagining of our world (Roy, 2020). However, this will require multilevel, multi-
cultural, cross-sector debate and actions that acknowledge that all human activity and the nat-
ural environment are interwoven.
Despite self-interested attempts to reify social distancing, the pandemic has caused govern-
ments and individuals to address the catastrophe in unprecedented ways, including supporting
business and industry, and public and private infrastructure (Vince, 2020). This has openly
revealed the intimate relations between economic, political and cultural forces that
McDonaldised activities generally conceal. Therefore, resisting an ‘isolated’McCovid-19 response,
that rationally sits apart from environmental activism is needed. As lockdown eases for some, a
return to thoughtless consumption could be just days away. Yet it took only days to notice the
cleaner air and urban wildlife that accompanies a less carbon-intensive lifestyle. It is necessary
therefore to ‘navigate the twin storms of Covid-19 and climate’and to ‘know that the climate cri-
sis will not wait for a more convenient time’(Vince, 2020).
Yet we may need to do even more things concurrently for this to be sustainable. Rather than
distancing logos, that reinforce neoliberal individualism, a new collective vision across sectors and
nations is needed, where contextual lessons from the global south are valued alongside those from
the global north. If there is one thing this pandemic has taught us it is that rational, generalised
interpretations need to be consigned to the past. A McCovid-19 response will no longer cut it.
First, do what works (Jake Wright)
What are the educational implications for the interplay between the climate crisis and the Covid-
19 pandemic? There are many ways to interpret such a call. One would be as a call for new
visions or new pedagogies, transforming what education is or could be in the face of unprece-
dented global challenges that seem to compound weekly. I wish to caution against this inter-
pretation as an initial, admittedly tempting, step.
To see why, I consider Gallo de Moraes et al. (2020) argument that our response to an unprece-
dented medical crisis should be a recommitment to basic, fundamentally sound care. This argument,
I believe, is instructive for how we as educators ought to respond to the crises du jour.
Physicians treating Covid-19 face a choice. They can either employ proven, efficacious treat-
ments, or they can “adopt and create novel approaches and therapies”(Gallo de Moraes et al.,
2020). While the latter is tempting, Gallo de Moraes and colleagues argue such strategies would
be a mistake precisely because physicians find themselves in crisis. For example, they note that a
potentially fatal complication of Covid-19 is acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which
can be successfully treated by shifting patients to a prone position. However, ARDS patients are
unlikely to be treated thusly, despite such positioning being proven and cost-effective. To ignore
such basic, fundamental, and efficacious treatment in favour of an exciting but untested protocol
is, they argue, simply wrong. As they note, “the stakes have never been higher,”but “now is not
the time to forsake our established methods”(Gallo de Moraes et al., 2020). To adhere to the
physician’s oath of primum non nocere (i.e., first do no harm), one must first do what works.
Like the physician struggling to respond to a ward of Covid-19 patients, we as educators can
be torn between a recommitment to the tried-and-true and the search for novelty in an effort to
14 P. JANDRIĆET AL.
overcome the crises of the moment. And like the physician, abandoning the tried-and-true to
seek novelty for novelty’s sake would be a mistake.
As educators, we have access to a host of practices that not only demonstrably allow students
to confront crisis, but motivate them to do so.
8
Like the physician rolling a patient into a prone
position, saying that our first response to the challenges of climate and pandemic should be
more group work, intensive writing, and learning communities is not sexy, but that’s not the
point. The point is that such practices have been shown to work, and there is little reason to
think that our current moment is so unprecedented that they will not work now. Further, like
prone positioning for ARDS, such pedagogical strategies are distressingly under-utilized despite
their proven efficacy. Before we seek a shiny new strategy, surely we ought to at least fully
implement what has been shown to work! It may be that we will need to completely re-envision
education to meet our current challenges, but coming to that realization will first require show-
ing that what has worked before cannot work now. Like physicians, our stakes have never been
higher as crises compound on themselves. The task before us is not to reinvent who we are or
what we do; it is to do what works and do it well.
Conclusion (Petar Jandri
c)
Fifteen responses to the question Who remembers Greta Thunberg? provide a rich tapestry of
themes, opinions, and (sometime opposing) conclusions. Focusing to concordances between
individual responses, we can identify a strong accent to the problem’s complexity, interconnec-
tivity, interdisciplinarity, individual and collective responsibility, our postdigital existence, and the
need to reinvent our sense of community. As it often happens with collective articles, however,
this tapestry of responses gives more than the sum of its parts, and this is where things become
really interesting ( Jandri
c et al., 2019; see also Jandri
c & Hayes, 2020; Jandri
c et al., 2020 ). Apart
from academic matters, the paper screams with feelings of confusion, individual powerlessness,
the urge to change, and dreams of a better world. These feelings are just as important as our
philosophical conclusions, because they allow us to act upon our theories. It is at the intersec-
tions of these two powerful human forces, reason and emotion, that we can now identify spaces
for collective emancipatory praxis.
Philosophy of education in a new key is a fresh approach to “a fundamental ecological, polit-
ical and moral principle: constitutional law must promote the welfare of all reflected in the
‘general will’” (Peters, Arndt, et al., 2020). Collectivity built into philosophy of education in a new
key reaches much deeper than this gathering of 15 human authors and sees animals, bacteria,
viruses, and other visible and non-visible living and semi-living entities as deeply interconnected,
together with our (non-living?) technologies (Fuller & Jandri
c, 2019; Peters, Rizvi, et al., 2020).
“Our physical microbiological contact is an expression of our biological interconnectivity which
also has cultural, social and political dimensions that are played out through the means of a
technological superstructure that takes many digital and postdigital forms.”(Peters, Rizvi, et al.,
2020). In our age of viral modernity (Peters, Jandri
c et al., 2020), philosophy of education in a
new key (Peters, Arndt, et al. 2020) allows active collective engagement with complexities and
intricacies of our interconnected reality. (Post)-pandemic education has an urgent duty to secure
that these messages are understood and applied widely.
Philosophy of education in a new key: who remembers Greta Thunberg?
Education and environment after the coronavirus
Michael A Peters (Open Review)
It is a delight for me to review this collective writing project organized by Petar Jandri
c, with
whom I have worked closely over the last few years and who has a prodigious work rate and a
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 15
commitment to the idea of the collective as a means for advancing and harnessing knowledge
in an era dominated by the significance of the environment of the Earth that provides the major
epistemological metaphors of our times in the twin concepts of ecologies and interconnectivities.
While we are friends and colleagues we don’t always agree and there is room for criticism on
both sides although on this occasion I am both impressed with the compression of complex
thinking and its knowledge ecology, as well the strength of individual contributions. Why
shouldn’t a collective paper be orchestrated to provide not just a set of discussion points but a
comprehensive survey of expert opinion in contrast to a single authored academic paper? The
collective paper aimed at the question of post-pandemic philosophy of education introduces a
new key which is urgent and real, and the theme is nicely framed in a series of four sections
that takes inspiration from the teenage activist Great Thunberg who has inspired so many. The
fifteen contributors most of whom have been introduced to Educational Philosophy and Theory
for the first time have put forward their philosophical positions in the way that overlaps,
strengthens and mirrors holistic organistic thinking. The effects are a chorus of voices that exam-
ine common themes from a variety of related perspectivism without being reduced to a simple
epistemological perspectivism. (It is more like a piece of interconnected DNA with its spiral repe-
titions). I don’t have the space here to comment on individual contributions because there are
so many but I do want to mention another feature which is the way authors draw on their own
sources of inspiration and influence –Huxley, Bakhtin, Derrida, Braidotti, Hall,
Zi
zek, Midgley,
Thunberg, Fromm, Phillipe, Arendt, Ostrom, Serres, Marshall, Gallo de Moraes to mention a few
of the names. The result, as Jandri
c explains in his conclusion is like a ‘rich tapestry’and some-
times an unexpected turn that nevertheless operates like a length of twine where individual
strands are strengthened and illuminated or thrown into sharp relief, by being part of a general
theme where there is some measure of agreement on what counts for us now and what must
be done. In particular, I am also impressed by how seemingly easy it was for this group of
authors to act in unison, to style their own distinctive contributions in line with the acceptance
of a common theme and an understanding of the larger project of philosophy in a new key.
After the environment and education
Marek Tesar (Open Review)
Collective writing has become an important form to express the thinking of a group of scholars
who do not have to agree with respect to ideology but rather are linked by their thinking about
similar concerns. The form is clever as it enables an argument to be contained and presented in
a small number of words; something that is not an easy task for any philosopher of education
and potentially the challenge that shapes the argument. The project Philosophy in a New Key
has been taken up in 2020, in the time of pandemic, and created an environment within which
scholars around the world have engaged with the ideas of Covid-19 and new normality through
different lenses, a diverse prism (see Tesar, 2020). The contribution and engagement with this
topic has thus far included various theoretical and geographical lenses (see for instance Kato,
2020; Jackson, 2020; Papastephanou, 2020; Hung, 2020; Waghid, 2020). In this paper, Jandri
c
et al have taken into account a tremendous collective power and energy to look at issues sur-
rounding the intersection and interface of the environment and education. The year 2020 indeed
started as a year where we were considering climate change as something pressing, the grand
challenge and primary the narrative of 2020 and beyond. However, instead (albeit this paper
challenges this), Covid-19, the virus, has entered our everyday and mundane lives, and also has
entered scholarship. Therefore, seeing Jandri
c et al. representing thinking about the environment
is powerful work, embodied through asking the question ‘Who remembers Greta Thunberg?’,
and writing about education and environment after Covid-19. The notion of ‘after’, which may
seem problematic to mention, is well articulated and interrogated in this collective writing.
16 P. JANDRIĆET AL.
Ralston offers us one of one of the most powerful statements and lessons from this collection
“Thunberg taught us to fear the threat of disappointed future generations”. Jandri
c and col-
leagues have used four main themes for their collective writing to structurally organise (but not
segregate) ideas around wider philosophical concerns, education, environment and activism, and
futures studies. Together, this creates perhaps the most vivid and strong encounter of the exam-
ination of our current conditions and the possibilities that we are encountering in philosophical
enquiry. This is a very lucid and structured inquiry where we consider not only ‘what’and ‘how’,
but also ‘what if’, in a way that is not only powerful and liberational, but also revolutionary, as a
call for action. What action, one may ask. There is that implicit question in the question ‘Who
remembers Greta Thunberg’?. There are complexities, there are ambivalences, but there is also
axiology. There is an urge, power and roar to the argument. It is political, it is ecological and it is
philosophical. And as Jandri
c himself argues: “It is at the intersections of these two powerful
human forces, reason and emotion, that we can now identify spaces for collective emancipa-
tory praxis”.
Notes
1. The question Who remembers Greta Thunberg? came out of a discussion between Petar Jandri
c and Peter
McLaren while we revised the article ’Critical intellectuals in postdigital times’for Policy Futures in Education
(Jandri
c and McLaren forthcoming 2020). The article was in its final stages of publication and we managed to
squeeze in only a few sentences on the topic. Following Michael Peters’invitation to develop a collective
article exploring an aspect of philosophy of education in a new key (Peters, Arndt, et al., 2020), I decided to
pursue this important question further by tapping into collective wisdom.
2. See https://www.springer.com/journal/42438.
3. See https://editorscollective.org.nz/.
4. Steve Fuller responds to the call for an interdisciplinary future on Twitter https://twitter.com/ProfSteveFuller/
status/1277153737702768642
5. This title paraphrases a sentence from Greta Thunberg’s viral speech at the 2019 UN Climate Action summit in
New York (Thunberg, 2019a).
6. Ninette Rothm€
uller is grateful to Marco Piana, Simone Gugliotta and Giovanna Bellesia from the Department of
Italian Studies at Smith College for their advice on the origins of the name Presena and to Amy Larson Rhodes
from the Department of Geosciences, also at Smith College, for her advice on the formation of Italian glaciers.
Ninette extends her gratitude to Petar Jandri
c for inviting her contribution and to Gregory Brown for copy
editing it.
7. Please consult Miller Cantzler and Huynh (2016) for an analysis of the intersectional injustices established
between e.g. racial inequality, tribal and human rights, human agency, institutional colonialization and
overfishing, and environmental injustice.
8. As a clear example of such practices, consider Kuh’s(2008) work on High Impact Practices. As Kuh notes, such
practices, like community-based learning, collaborative projects, learning communities, and common
intellectual experiences, have repeatedly been shown to positively impact student success (Kinzie et al., 2008).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
ORCID
Petar Jandri
chttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-6464-4142
Jimmy Jaldemark http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7140-8407
Zoe Hurley http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9870-8677
Brendan Bartram http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8281-3002
Adam Matthews http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4013-0232
Michael Jopling http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2720-5650
Ninette Rothm€
uller http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2857-1107
Benjamin Green http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7810-908X
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY 17
Olli Pyyhtinen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8522-2515
Sarah Hayes http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8633-0155
Jake Wright http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1299-6725
Marek Tesar http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7771-2880
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