SHBS puts the development of its faculty team at the top priority. In addition to the weekly teaching and research meeting held by each subject group, homeroom teachers’ meeting and new teachers’ training session, it also offers training sessions to improve teachers’ professionalism at its routine faculty meeting held each Tuesday. In one of such professionalism training, principal Chris brought us one session themed "Green Campus Development." 

SHBS attaches great importance to the “green education” of its students. From various kinds of recycling bins (milk cartons, wastepaper, used clothes, etc.) on campus, to the four consecutive years of participation in "Pick Up China" green program and "Building Sustainable Shanghai" PBL program, all of these are green education practices for its students.

With a grand narrative, principal Chris illustrated the dire situation of the climate crisis with figures and graphs, led us to reflect on the environmental protection measures in the past, and inspired us to think about the actions we should take as educators. His sharing inspired us to explore ways to further integrate environmental education into curriculum design and construction to further inspire students to co-shoulder the responsibility of our times.

The exponential population growth in the past three centuries or so  had  profound impacts on our society and our way of living, yet we by and large continue to use the same conventional subjects approaches to structure schools and students’ learning.

“ If we look at population growth in the past 12,000 years, we see a truly remarkable transformation in the very recent past: absolutely exponential change from about the year 1700. The rise of that red line is truly staggering. Indeed, based on approximate birth rates, this means that of all human beings born since the beginning of sedentary agriculture and animal husbandry (c. 8000 BCE), roughly 20% of them have lived since 1650.  At the present extreme, 6% of those ever born are alive today. ”

“……in these past three or so centuries, simple reason would lead us to imagine some profound impacts—on how we live, the resources we use, the tools we use to reckon with the world around us.” “...... we by and large continue to use the same conventional subjects approaches to structure schools and students’ learning.” 

The population growth was in parallel with the consumption of fossil fuels. Based on the trajectory, the consumption will be explosive with the development of Africa.

“This explosive population growth happened in parallel with the discovery and wide-spread utilization of fossil fuels.”

“There is a vastly uneven history of economic development. Even from just 1965, Europe and North America consumed roughly 85% of the world’s oil. The biggest shift has come in the Asia Pacific region. Greater prosperity requires greater consumption. And certainly, previously poor regions have an entitlement to the same standards of living long-enjoyed amongst the rich.”

“If we look again at global population trends, we’ll see the next great wave of consumption will come in Africa. This ‘African bulge,’ as the Economist puts it, will radically shift where and how we think about development, and inter-connection amongst nations, politically and economically and, of course, in terms of environmental consequences. ”

Even more concerning than the surge in energy consumption is the global warming caused by carbon emission

“Here again we see exponential growth, though pointedly, and this is important, the real inflection point comes around 1950, just 70 years ago, and mostly in our lifetimes. While the developing world now accounts for a huge portion of these emissions, we see that rich counties, led by the US, have at least doubled if not tripled their own contributions over the past few generations. If we consider things on a per-capita basis, the picture is even more inequitable, compounded by the carbon released elsewhere to fuel import-led consumption.”

“And as much as we consider carbon, the really more significant problem comes from what that carbon does to our atmosphere, and in turn, the rising of global temperatures.”

“What we see here is deeply concerning, but also comfortingly linear. Versus those exponential slopes in other graphs, we might take solace in our human capacity for adaptation. Yet it doesn’t take too much of a stretch of logic to imagine this simple slope may not be with us for too much longer.”

Contained within our own professional endeavors, it is hard to plan and sustain such work in the longue duree.

“ However familiar we may be with these facts and figures, I wanted as much to expand our conventional refrains of scale and magnitude. We live rather contained within our own professional endeavors, and weekly meetings, semester enrollments, annual hiring, and retention—these shape our nature of time. At most we might plan for three to five years for a major new program, an accreditation review, or expansion campaign. Even the most visionary amongst us likely struggle to get beyond a decade, and in practical terms it’s hard institutionally to sustain such work in the longue durée. ”

Reflecting on the green movements and measures we had  taken: catastrophes become so familiar that we tend to forget the crisis we are facing.

“If we’re going to take seriously the need for a new approach in the future, we must take stock of how we’ve arrived at the present, and the assumptions we bring to our leadership and educational vision. ”

“By the 1970s, environmental degradation had become an inescapable part of everyday life. Led by Los Angeles, cities around the developed world had become shrouded in smog. In Italy the Seveso Dioxin cloud injured thousands and contaminated the food chain. Rivers and lakes caught fire and a series massive oil spills occurred around the world. ”

“In response, government agencies were founded to address these crises; Green political parties gathered strength in Europe. These highly visible problems could be remediated through regulation and greater safety precautions.”

“A trajectory had been established, with actions taken to restore a more Edenic, or at least safer, green world we imagined from the past: clear and present progress could be had, step by step.”

“In primary school, I rode the initial wave of recycling education. Don’t litter! Identify the right bin, and one day’s waste would soon return as the containers of tomorrow. Landfills would shrink if not disappear, and most importantly we didn’t need to feel quite so guilt about everything that accumulated on our curbs for weekly collection. Those bottles will be back, I remember thinking—and indeed, through the 80s many places become vastly cleaner and less polluted. ”

“Whatever the problem, a manageable solution seemed to be in sight; however severe the crisis, a coordinated response could contain and mitigate disaster: catastrophe became, on the one hand, so familiar that, on the other, we developed an incredible capacity to forget. Disasters—just as we find today with floods and fires, heatwave and artic blasts—became cyclically normal as they appeared in and soon dropped from new cycles—because the vast majority of our reality proceeds without interruption, or even reflects a larger improvement. ”

“Yet a great deal of that pollution got exported to the developing world. Anyone who has lived here more than five years knows of how serious the problem of PM 2.5 had become. Yet again, the trajectory has worked its magic: we have far bluer skies on far more many days than I ever would have seemed imaginable in 2014 or 2015. Even I’ve started to forget: when someone abroad occasionally asks “how’s the pollution” I have to remind myself of how defining a burden it had become in the very recent past. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Yet India soon came to have the world’s most toxic air and despite a brief respite during the first wave of Covid shutdowns, it continues to. In that pause, the Himalayas became visible for the first time in a generation; sun reflected from the Taj Mahal in a way most had forgotten. ”

“But even those most dramatic occurrences obscure the broader conundrum that counteracts the trajectory of success we’ve imagined for movements to make things more green. ”

Reflections on green campus development and green education

“That thought gives me pause as I consider the programs and curriculum we use in schools, because I think the same may be the case, from the level of student performance to many of the metrics we might use to evaluate institutional progress in green development.”

“Big picture, I see three dominant approaches that have been taken, and I would like to consider each in turn. ”

“Yet despite our very best efforts in all these regards, we’ve seen nothing like the dramatic change that’s required.”

“I’m honestly far from a green crusader, but I take pause nearly every morning from one or another stories in the news.”

“On the one hand, I appreciate how much more coverage appears in the traditional press, and how major parts of the business world are realizing how they must respond to the costs and consequences of climate change.”

Read the next blog for the rest......