Envisioning a future for young Balinese : the move towards sustainability in secondary education

Abstract

Sustainability has become a debate of international significance; it addresses how human development clashes with the finality of many resources on this planet and may threaten the well-being of future generations and ecosystems. The debate thus touches on the question of how humans interact with their environment - a prime concern of the discipline of geography. Behaving in line with sustainability involves changes in human self-conduct. Such change seems to require at least some awareness of and education about development and environmental processes. In fact, the importance of integrating sustainability in the domain of education has become a prominent one. Young people are often described as key players in implementing sustainability. Thus, international sustainability strategies view educating children and teenagers about sustainability as a prerequisite for future sustainable behaviour. In 2005 the United Nations [UN] Decade of Education for Sustainable Development commenced. In this context, scholars and educators discuss how to educate about sustainability. The UN suggests conveying an image of 'global cooperation' toward sustainable development in education whilst ensuring 'local relevance'. Yet, what ' local relevance' means and how it can be attained remains unclear. I argue that in efforts to implement sustainability education, both local debates of sustainability and local contexts of education should be examined. Otherwise, international sustainability education efforts may universalise ideas that are superficially portrayed as 'global' but that neglect local particularities. I take up the issue of sustainability education in Bali. On the Indonesian island, debates have emerged that propose ways to move forward amidst increasing environmental destruction and pollution as well as political and cultural change. These discussions sketch a 'Balinese way' of developing sustainably. I focus on how knowledge and debates around sustainability are engaged in secondary education in Bali's capital city Denpasar. Informed by poststructural theory, my thesis is that in order to locally implement sustainability in education, processes and institutional arrangements of power, governing, discourse and knowledge need to be assessed. Sustainability education is portrayed as a ' global cause', but it is the institutions and discourses articulated in local places that shape how sustainability can be implemented locally. In Bali, sustainability meets an educational climate shaped by curricular and political change nationally, regionally and locally. How sustainability is being integrated in this environment is one subject of this research. I examine how high school students in Bali learn about environment and sustainability. How is sustainability framed in Balinese teaching practice? How is sustainability knowledge engaged in teaching and learning at high schools in Denpasar? The research explores the roles created for students in sustainability education and the practices of self conduct these roles effect. Rather than providing a manual for implementing sustainability education, this work focuses on the conceptual issues around the project of marrying sustainability and education. I show that sustainable development cannot be treated as a neutral policy framework that is easily integrated into existing educational systems around the globe. My argument draws on theoretical discussions around discourse, power, govemmentality and subjectivity. I contend that sustainability and education operate as discourses that generate power in multiple ways. Both operate as governmentalities that employ different types of subjectivation. As sustainability 'meets' education, this involves the combination of two separate discursive and institutional contexts. How they 'fit together' depends on how both sustainability and education are institutionalised in local contexts. I also draw on theoretical debates in environmental education, participation, and action research. I discuss how geographical action research can be employed to research and foster discourse formation, and to explain and create subject positions in sustainability education. Empirically, I engaged an action research methodology. If young people are key stakeholders in sustainability, then it is critical that they take an active stance in the very debate of sustainability. This is not always the case in sustainability education. During nine months of fieldwork, I researched Balinese debates around sustainability, and Balinese approaches to sustainability education at secondary schools. Additionally, I conducted an interactive workshop program with several groups of high school students in Denpasar and Sanur. In these workshops, I experimented with educational practices to involve students in the formation of youth-based sustainability knowledges and debates. I researched what knowledges, themes, ideas and languages of sustainability, future and environment emerged in the interactive teaching approach of my action research. I was particularly interested how far a participatory research project in sustainability education would evoke agency among students to act towards more sustainable futures and would open spaces for new languages, roles and practices. Based on my research experience, I argue that understanding how discourse and power operate around sustainability education in place is instrumental to addressing sustainability in 'locally relevant' ways.