How can education address the global metacrisis? 21 education goals for the 21st century

Abstract

Decades of research confirms that human activity is steadily polluting the Earth, disrupting Earth’s climate, degrading ecosystems, reducing biodiversity, and generally eroding Earth’s ability to support life, including human life. Simultaneously, social science research reveals serious and growing problems with the social fabric of modern civilization. Despite these intertwined ecological and societal crises, most P-16 education still pursues the same types of goals that it pursued when humans were creating these problems in the first place. By intertwining Indigenous worldviews with environmental, psychological, and sociological research, 21 new education goals are proposed for preparing P-16 graduates to transform society to help resolve the ecological and societal crises that are likely to dominate the 21st century. Challenges, benefits, and suggestions for making these goals central to P-16 education are discussed.

Keywords

Ecological and societal crises life-oriented P-16 education goals education policy Indigenous worldviews transforming society ending ecological overshoot

“We are still educating the young as if there were no planetary emergency.” - David Orr

Introduction

Despite increasingly ominous reports from scientists, most PK-16 education neither teaches students about nor prepares graduates for the global metacrisis humanity faces. That is, leading scientists have warned for decades that modern civilization is steadily disrupting the climate and degrading Earth’s ability to support life, and that worsening ecological and societal breakdown is inevitable unless we make rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes in every aspect of society (e.g., Beckstead et al., 2014; Clugston, 2019; Fletcher et al., 2024; IPCC, 2023; Ripple et al., 2017; Kendall, 1992). Other researchers have warned us about the fraying social fabric, deteriorating democracies, loss of social cohesion, declining trust in governments, and assaults on science and truth (Applebaum, 2020; Freedom House, 2023; Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018).

These ecological and societal crises are not isolated problems; they constitute one interconnected global metacrisis. First, the individual crises are part of an interconnected metacrisis because problems in one area (e.g., droughts and climate disasters) create or amplify problems in other areas (e.g., food shortages and deteriorating democracies). Second, this is a metacrisis instead of isolated crises because all the crises we face are inevitable by-products of the worldview, habits, and systems of modern civilization (Afzaal, 2023; Fletcher et al., 2024; Mitchell, 2018; Rees, 2023a, 2023b). Ultimately, any civilization that consistently prioritizes short-term pleasure, profits, and power over the long-term wellbeing of the whole web of life—as modern civilization does—will inevitably disrupt and degrade the planetary systems and governments it depends on. Indeed, this is the human predicament: Many of the very same things that maximize our short-term pleasure, profits, and power also unravel in the long run the health of the ecosystems and societies we depend on (Afzaal, 2023).

However, rather than teaching students about humanity’s predicament and the best responses to it, most education currently promotes the same student outcomes that helped create a civilization that is destroying its only home while making the social fabric unravel. Thus, P-16 education is unwittingly helping perpetuate the global metacrisis while failing to prepare graduates for a future in which worsening breakdown is already underway, and in which a metamorphosis of society is needed to bring our civilization in line with Earth’s limits and the laws of nature (Catton, 1980; Merkel, 2003; Read and Alexander, 2019; Rees, 2023a; Wackernagel and Beyers, 2019).

In hopes of sparking discussions that will encourage P-16 educators to address the global metacrisis, this article proposes twenty-one education goals that would help steer society away from catastrophic collapse and toward healing the web of life. I then discuss challenges and supports for such life-nurturing education.

21 education goals for transforming society to be healthy, fair, & sustainable

To the extent possible, students in P-16 education should learn the facts, develop the skills, feel the emotions and satisfied needs, and develop the worldviews, motivations, and habits described by these 21 life goals. These goals are not exhaustive, and others would craft them differently. They are called “life goals” because the proposed transformation of schools and society would make the long-term wellbeing of humans and other living things and life systems the central focus of our civilization. The goals are grouped into five categories, each representing a key category of outcomes regarding the global metacrisis or constructive responses to it.

Indigenous worldviews were the overarching theoretical framework for these goals, but research and theory from many disciplines (e.g., ecological economics) shaped and provided empirical support for the goals. The goals were also informed by years of teaching future and practicing teachers about the global metacrisis (Wheatley, 2022a).

Because our current predicament is overwhelming, these goals may also feel overwhelming. That’s natural, but no one would remember or try to teach all these goals right away. My aim was to identify a set of student outcomes that are critical for understanding the global metacrisis and for creating a healthy, fair, and sustainable civilization.

Understanding the global metacrisis

This set of goals is essential because far too many people are still just talking about the climate crisis and have not realized that it is just one of many symptoms of the fact that modern civilization is totally out of line with Earth’s limits and the laws of nature (Wheatley, 2024).

Life Goal #1: Understand that the health of Earth’s ecosystems and societies is steadily deteriorating and understand why this global metacrisis poses existential threats to humans and other species. For graduates to understand the world they are entering and the threats that must be managed, they must first understand the ways in which the health of ecosystems and societies is deteriorating and the threats these crises pose to the whole web of life. For example, graduates should learn how man-made global warming plus chemical and plastic pollution, ecosystem degradation, and loss of biodiversity all pose growing threats to our ability to feed everyone in the coming decades (e.g., IPBES, 2019; IPCC, 2023; Jagermeyr et al., 2021; Morrison et al., 2022; Naidu et al., 2021; Smith et al., 2022). Regarding societies, graduates should learn that we have a fraying social fabric, a 17-year decline in the degree of democracy globally (Freedom House, 2023), a rise in authoritarianism and extreme political views (Applebaum, 2020), increasing assaults on science and truth, and understand the threats that this unraveling poses to the future of life on Earth.

Life Goal #2: Understand that the main cause of ongoing ecological unraveling is humanity’s vast ecological overshoot—roughly 70% greater than Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity. Far beyond the climate crisis, graduates should learn that the central cause of ecological breakdown is ecological overshoot (Catton, 1980; Rees, 2023a, 2023b; Wackernagel and Beyers, 2019). That is, humans are depleting non-renewable resources we rely on, depleting renewable resources faster than they can re-grow or re-populate, destroying ecosystems faster than they can regenerate, poisoning the Earth faster than it can de-toxify itself, and warming the planet faster than living things and ecosystems can adapt (e.g., Finn et al., 2023; IPCC, 2023; Morrison et al., 2022). Due to this vast overshoot, humanity has pushed the world beyond “the safe operating space for humanity” for six of Earth’s nine key planetary boundaries (Richardson et al., 2023). Critically, the degree of humanity’s ecological overshoot is closely linked to both the size and degree of industrialization of the global economy.

Life Goal #3: Understand that humanity’s ecological overshoot has five main sources; direct destruction of ecosystems, direct killing of species, chemical and plastic pollution, disruption of Earth’s water cycle, and rapid man-made-global warming. Graduates should learn that even if we solved the climate crisis tomorrow, there are multiple other ways in which human impacts—but primarily the impacts of wealthy nations and people—are driving ecosystems and societies toward collapse (Fletcher et al., 2024; Rees, 2023b). Because Earth’s species and ecosystems are our planetary life support system, students should learn how various human activities harm other species, ecosystems, and our future.

Life Goal #4: Understand that the direct causes of the current societal unraveling include vast economic inequality, billions of people with chronically unmet needs, blowback from ecological crises, dysfunctional governments, and divisive misinformation. Graduates should learn that these factors make societies weaken and unravel and learn how those dynamics operate. For example, students should learn why having billions of people with chronically unmet needs makes individuals, families, and societies weaker and more prone to doing things that harms other people, species, and ecosystems (Kasser, 2002; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010).

Life Goal #5: Understand that the deep causes of the global metacrisis are pleasure-trap habits and systems—ones that maximize short-term pleasure, profits, and power (or other narrow outcomes) while backfiring overall in the long run for people and the planet. This is the human predicament underlying the global metacrisis (Afzaal, 2023), so graduates should learn why maximizing short-term pleasure, profits, and power inevitably causes accumulating and unsustainable harms to people and the planet. For example, students should learn why producing more pleasurable consumer products hurts ecosystems and learn that industrial farming methods boost crop yields and profits in the short run but steadily erode Earth’s ability to support life in the long run (Mu et al., 2022; Naidu et al., 2021; Pimentel and Burgess, 2013; Robin, 2014; Swan, 2021).

Life Goal #6: Understand that the deeper causes of the global metacrisis are that modern civilization promotes pleasure-trap ways of thinking and feeling. Underlying and justifying pleasure-trap ways of doing things is a modern worldview that is anthropocentric, egocentric, narrow, and short-term in its focus (McGilchrist, 2009). That worldview appears within the short-term pleasure-seeking of consumerism, the short-term wealth and power seeking of competitive nation states, and the short-term profit-and-power seeking of capitalism. Although traditional societies preached delaying gratification and concern for future consequences of present actions, in the post WWII era, industrialized societies were intentionally redesigned to promote hedonistic consumerism and short-term thinking. As a result, caution, self-restraint, and “save for a rainy day” have often been replaced by “If it feels good, do it.”

Understanding the three healing goals

Guided by a range of scientific research, Raworth (2017) identified three goals that societies must reach to heal ecosystems, stabilize the climate, and heal societies.

Life Goal #7: Understand why healing societies and ecosystems requires meeting everyone’s basic needs. By definition, consistent satisfaction of basic needs plays a pivotal role in the wellbeing of all living things. Thus, for societies to transform so that they consistently meet the basic needs of other people, species, and ecosystems, graduates need to understand the basic needs of other living beings and the crucial importance of consistently satisfying them. Tragically, we now have billions of people with chronically unmet needs, and people with unmet needs are often too preoccupied with satisfying those needs to do the extra learning, exert the extra effort, or spend the extra money needed to make civilization fairer or sustainable.

Life Goal #8: Understand why healing societies and ecosystems requires much greater economic equality within and between nations. Graduates should learn that vast economic inequality is a potent social toxin that inevitably causes higher levels of social dysfunctions and political corruption while learning the mechanisms by which it does so (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010, 2019). In tandem, graduates should learn why creating healthy societies requires much greater economic equality (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010, 2019).

Life Goal #9: Understand why healing societies and ecosystems requires transforming society so that our impacts fit within all of Earth’s planetary boundaries. Related to Life Goal #2, students should learn that we must end all forms of ecological overshoot to stop worsening ecological and societal unraveling and secure a bright future. This is not a personal or political position; it is simply how the laws of nature work. However, the changes required to end overshoot go far beyond what most people currently realize. A few examples may help illustrate that.

To prevent catastrophic ecological collapse from humanity’s 70% collective ecological overshoot while allowing for regeneration of ecosystems and biodiversity and modest construction of basic infrastructure in the poorest countries, we must shrink the global private sector economy by roughly 55% and never again let it grow much larger than that. Also, because the vast majority of our ecological footprint comes from the richest nations and people, achieving such a reduction in our collective footprint would require a 60–99+% reduction in the per person footprints of people in wealthy nations and wealthy people elsewhere (Global Footprint Network, 2024). For example, the average American has an ecological footprint of roughly 7.7 hectares/18.7 acres of habitable land per year (Global Footprint Network, 2024) and would need to shrink that to under 1.5 hectares/3.7 acres per year to reach a sustainable level for a planet with eight billion people. Instructively but soberingly, the only nations with average per person ecological footprints that would be sustainable for eight billion humans are cash-poor agrarian nations (e.g., Niger and Myanmar; Global Footprint Network, 2024).

Next, we must end overshoot of specific planetary boundaries (Richardson et al., 2023). To end our overshoot of the land-use changes, boundary would require dramatically reduced consumption of animal foods (especially beef) and adoption of much more plant-based diets. Significantly, more plant-based diets would also help reduce overshoot on all the other planetary boundaries now in overshoot. Ending overshoot of the climate change planetary boundary and preventing overshoot of the ocean acidification boundary requires stopping burning fossil fuels. Ending overshoot on the safe boundary for biogeochemical flows requires sharply reducing use of fertilizers. Finally, because scientists set the safe boundary for novel entities never tested for long-term safety at zero usage (Richardson et al., 2023), ending overshoot of the novel entities’ planetary boundary would require phasing out millions of man-made products, as well as pesticides, most plastics, tens of thousands of man-made chemicals, GMOs, and AI. We will revisit this point later, but for now, please notice that ending ecological overshoot requires an almost unimaginable transformation of modern civilization.

Adopting the worldview humans need to heal the web of life

Life Goal #10: Internalize Indigenous worldviews, enriched by modern science. Ultimately, we need to learn Indigenous worldviews to create healthy, fair, and sustainable societies (Lake, 2024; Mitchell, 2018). Graduates should learn that the only societies with sustainable economies and lifestyles were (and are) some Indigenous tribes, and those sustainable lifestyles were built around and sustained by worldviews that are in many ways the opposite of the worldview underlying modern civilization. For example, as Mitchell (2018) notes, Indigenous worldviews usually value kinship with all living things, wholeness rather than fragmentation, communalism over individualism, respecting elders over celebrating youth, cooperation over competition, patience over aggression, listening rather than talking, harmony rather than conquest, humility rather than arrogance, sharing rather than hoarding, and a long-term perspective on the effects one’s actions have on others and the Earth. It seems impossible for humanity to prevent collapse and care well for the web of life without adopting a worldview that prioritizes such values.

Life Goal #11: Understand that many complex interdependencies sustain the web of life. Unlike Indigenous societies, modern civilization was based on the questionable notion that humans are separate from other living beings and “the environment.” However, the reality is that we too are an animal whose lives and societies are totally dependent on Earth’s ecosystems, other species, climate, and natural resources. Even what we think of as “our own” bodies are really a symphony of interdependent relationships in which hundreds of species of microbes on our skin and in our eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and guts keep us alive and healthy while we keep them alive (Yong, 2018). The flip side of this interdependence is that the future wellbeing of the species and ecosystems we depend on is dependent upon the actions humans take or don’t take in the coming decades (DeClerk et al., 2021).

Life Goal #12: Develop sophisticated long-term systems thinking. Graduates should learn that the world is full of complex systems (e.g., Capra and Luisi, 2014; Meadows, 2008), that our actions usually cause an array of short-term and long-term effects, and thus, the effectiveness of policies and practices cannot be determined solely by their short-term or easily measured effects. Specifically, graduates should learn that the actions, products, and processes that boost pleasure, profits, and power most in the short run also usually cause serious long-term harms to individuals, societies, other species, or ecosystems (Afzaal, 2023; Fletcher et al., 2024; Rees, 2023b). Therefore, reductionist science and our everyday impressions often mislead us about what works best. Examples of common and seemingly beneficial practices and products that backfire overall in the long run include burning fossil fuels, pesticides, teaching to the test, plastics, and a growing private sector economy. Related to this, graduates should be skilled in analyzing and predicting the broad and long-term effects of human actions. Such systems thinking encourages using the precautionary principle for judging the wisdom of proposed products, processes, and policies.

Life Goal #13: Understand the world’s four economies and the proper role of each. To navigate the existential crises we face, graduates should learn that the world has four economies or systems for providing for our basic needs: the Earth economy, family/community economy, private sector economy, and public sector economy (Raworth, 2017). Critically, the Earth economy is the foundational economy for all the other economies, so if the Earth economy continues to be degraded, all the other economies will inevitably unravel along with it. Also, and despite the popular mantra that “the markets know best,” graduates should learn that each economy has functions that it naturally does better than the other economies can. For example, the private sector is well-known for underproviding, overcharging for, or cutting corners on things classified as public goods. Thus, the neoliberal trend toward privatizing functions that are best done by the public sector economy (e.g., education, healthcare, and prisons) has caused substantial damage to people and the planet.

Life Goal #14: Understand why preventing catastrophic collapse while securing a decent future for life on Earth requires a metamorphosis of our civilization. Students should learn that modern civilization is a self-terminating system that is heading toward worsening collapse for roughly the same reasons that all past advanced civilizations collapsed. That is, in a catabolic process, technologically advanced societies grow and sustain themselves by steadily destroying the pre-conditions for their initial emergence, including abundant non-renewable resources, a stable climate, lush ecosystems, staggering biodiversity, clean water, air, and soils; social trust and cohesion; and even morality (e.g., Diamond, 2011; Rees, 2023b).

Because of this fact, in one area after another, creating a healthy, fair, and sustainable civilization requires doing things in roughly the opposite way of modern civilization. For example, modern civilization is destroying Earth’s ecosystems and climate to grow the private sector economy larger and more industrialized, accompanied by lavish consumer lifestyles. In contrast, ending ecological overshoot requires shrinking that economy and making it less industrialized and more agrarian, with much simpler lifestyles. Also, human civilization has shrunk Earth’s biomass by roughly 50% over the last 2000 years (Schramski et al., 2015), so the built environment now outweighs all the living biomass on Earth (Elhacham et al., 2020). Ending overshoot and healing ecosystems will require reversing that trend until Earth’s biomass substantially outweighs the built environment. Meanwhile, our capitalist economy reliably increases economic inequality (Piketty, 2014), leaving billions of people with chronically unmet needs and creating a wide array of social dysfunctions and political corruption (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010). In sharp contrast, to meet everyone’s needs, reduce social and political dysfunctions, and leave everyone with adequate resources to pay for the sustainable ways of doing things (e.g., organic produce), we will need massive redistribution of wealth between and within nations. Next, as explained under Life Goal #9, ending overshoot of all planetary boundaries would require rationing, replacing, or banning many of the defining products and processes of modern civilization. Among those, chemical and plastic pollution is causing sperm counts to drop by 1–2% per year for humans and wildlife alike (Swan, 2021), thus threatening a population crash due to infertility if we don’t phase out those products. However, obstructing such a healing move, our current legal system protects profits over the wellbeing of life and defends one’s ability to pollute and destroy ecosystems you own: In contrast, a life-friendly legal system would protect the rights of nature and prioritize the wellbeing of life over short-term profits and ownership (Boyd, 2017). Finally, as noted under Life Goal #10, for such shifts in humanity’s habits and systems to make any sense to people would require transforming the whole worldview underlying modern civilization.

Ultimately, students should learn that preventing catastrophic collapse and securing a decent future for all life on Earth will require a true metamorphosis of civilization. If we fail to transform societies to fit Earth’s limits, the inevitable consequence would be a massive “population correction” for humans and other species (Rees, 2023b).

Emotional, social, moral, and motivational prerequisites for healing life

What are the emotional, social, moral, and motivational prerequisites for producing graduates who care much better for other people and the planet?

Life Goal #15: Consistently satisfy students’ basic physical and psychological needs. All living things tend to thrive when their basic physical needs are consistently met but tend to struggle, get sick, or die when those needs are not met. Decades of research clearly indicates that humans also have basic psychological needs, and if those needs are consistently satisfied, that promotes better physical and mental health, learning, job performance, relationships, and greater self-actualization (Ryan and Deci, 2017). Furthermore, research indicates that consistent satisfaction of basic needs when people are young makes it more likely that they will grow up to be the kind of adults who prioritize what are called intrinsic life goals, which include building relationships, giving back to your community, and caring for nature (see Life Goal #17; Kasser, 2002). Obviously, these are the kinds of goals people must prioritize if we are to heal ecosystems and societies. In sharp contrast, people whose basic needs were not consistently met in childhood are more likely to prioritize compensatory extrinsic life goals in adulthood: wealth, possessions, fame, beauty, and competitive status (Kasser, 2002). Unfortunately, valuing extrinsic life goals tends to make people antagonistic to the policies and practices that are needed to care well for people and the planet (e.g., progressive taxation, strong social safety net, and strict environmental regulations; Kasser, 2002).

Life Goal #16: Feel kinship with and empathy for other people and species, especially those who have been exploited and hurt. This reflects the Indigenous value of kinship and right relations, and it helps foster the motivation described in Life Goal #18. Especially within societies that emphasize individualism, competitiveness, and treating nature as merely raw materials for our use, rebuilding caring connections between students and other people and species will take substantial time and effort. However, it is critical work, for as evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould observed, we must forge a bond between ourselves and nature because we will not fight to save what we do not love.

Life Goal #17: Value intrinsic life goals much more strongly than extrinsic life goals. Values inevitably guide societies in one direction or another, so, as noted earlier, unless future citizens value intrinsic life goals more than extrinsic life goals, they will not be motivated to care well for people or the planet, and instead will often strongly oppose life-preserving policies and practices because those get in the way of amassing wealth and power (Freeland, 2013; Kasser, 2002). Educators often resist teaching values, but to create a healthy, just, and sustainable society, graduates must value the wellbeing of human and planetary life over amassing money and possessions, and value fairness over competitive or materialistic advantage.

Life Goal #18: Be highly motivated to care for other people, species, and ecosystems, even when doing so requires current sacrifices on their part. I believe it is self-evident that unless we foster in the younger generation strong motivation to prioritize caring for other people, species, and ecosystems, it will be impossible to transform society to be healthy, just, and sustainable. Building upon the more general orientation of intrinsic life goals (Life Goal #16), this goal is more narrowly aimed at motivation for daily living or for projects to help address the global metacrisis. For example, do graduates have sufficient deeply internalized motivations so they would often choose to do things in ways that take more effort, cost more money, or are less convenient—in order to care better for the long-term wellbeing of other people or species?

Skills and habits for creating healthy, fair, and sustainable societies

Life Goal #19: Develop extensive practical skills for meeting the physical needs of oneself and one’s family or community (e.g., growing one’s own food). Creating sustainable lifestyles for everyone with less than 1.5 hectare/3.7 acre per person footprints requires a comprehensive planned simplification of society in which we return to more agrarian societies with more localized, lower-tech, semi-circular, and labor-intensive economies (e.g., Bradford, 2019; Merkel, 2003; Wackernagel and Beyers, 2019). We may hope that selected features of modern civilization (e.g., medicines, computers, and mass transit) can fit within Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity. However, if we don’t begin a planned right-sizing of civilization, then ecological overshoot will continue until it produces a catastrophic ecological and societal breakdown that would kill far more people and species, thus forcing the remaining people into much simpler lifestyles anyway. Therefore, given that the unwinding of this highly industrialized society is inevitable (Rees, 2023b), many of the skills graduates will need in the future are traditional self-sufficiency skills: farming, filtering drinking water, building and maintaining shelters, plumbing, making and mending clothing, manual labor, and even training and caring for draft animals.

Fortunately, we have a 21st century example of a society adapting when the steady supply of fossil fuels and machines suddenly stopped. After the Soviet Union fell, the economic embargo on Cuba forced it to shift from industrial agriculture to farming using manual labor and draft animals (Chollet et al., 2007). The average Cuban reportedly lost 15 pounds, but they were able to shift remarkably quickly to a system that fed everyone by using more manual labor, draft animals, and organic agriculture.

Life Goal #20: Develop the skills and habits needed for reciprocal and collaborative social relationships and self-governance. Indigenous scholars and many others have long argued that modern civilization is an inherently exploitative system that takes without giving back, destroys without regenerating, and takes from the many to give to the few (e.g., Mitchell, 2018). To create societies that are healthy, fair, and sustainable, students must learn to form social relationships and self-governance characterized by empathy, reciprocity, cooperation, and meeting everyone’s needs. To the extent that only more local/regional agrarian economies are ecologically sustainable for over eight billion people, graduates should also learn methods for wise local and bioregional governance (e.g., Cato, 2012).

Life Goal #21: Develop a resilient ability to resist temptation, delay gratification, and consistently choose the actions that meet one’s own present needs while protecting the long-term wellbeing of other people and species. Fittingly, the second half of this goal is one definition of sustainability, but as Indigenous people know, achieving such sustainability requires resisting temptation and putting off gratification to serve long-term goals related to deeply held values and goals. Significantly, ability to resist temptation and delay gratification is also a well-known predictor of future achievement for children, and this character trait is obviously critical for escaping the pleasure traps that ensnared modern civilization and for creating a healthy, fair, and sustainable civilization.

Discussion

This discussion addresses common objections and obstacles to these goals, factors that will promote a transformation of society, the sequence for teaching these goals, challenges for educators, and supports and tools for teaching about the global metacrisis.

Common objections to these goals

First, many people object to teaching students, especially young ones, about scary things. However, I have taught PreK-5 teachers for 40 years, and we have always taught even young children about many scary things (e.g., hot stoves and stranger danger). Given that the overarching context for life in the 21st century will be worsening ecological and societal unraveling, the existential threats we face and changes we must make to provide the best future possible should be at the very heart of the curriculum (Wheatley, 2022b).

Next, many people object to non-academic goals such as basic needs, values, emotions, motivations, or blue-collar skills. However, to create a society that cares for the whole web of life, we need goals that care about the whole child and nurture the whole web of life. Indeed, it is precisely the divorce of traditional academic goals, standards, and teaching methods from human emotions, values, and motives that allowed us to unwittingly train graduates to obediently do so many things that destroy the web of life.

Other obstacles to pursuing these goals

The socio-political obstacles to schools embracing these goals are numerous and formidable. Business leaders will aggressively oppose teaching that we need a smaller economy. Elected officials will oppose any agenda that involves telling their constituents they must live with less. Many among the super-rich will stubbornly resist such a transformation because meeting everyone’s needs equitably while ending overshoot will require a massive redistribution of their wealth and power to others (Raworth, 2017).

Additional obstacles will come from average citizens, including consumers addicted to shopping, conspiracy theorists who claim these crises are a hoax, or techno-optimists who claim some silver-bullet technology will save the day—not realizing that more man-made stuff is the problem, not the solution. Conservatives and others will strenuously object to the idea that to create a sustainable society, we must replace western ideology with Indigenous worldviews. Many will stay in denial regarding the global metacrisis. Proponents of so-called green growth will claim we can decouple economic growth from ecological impacts yet maintain modern lifestyles, not noticing that even if everyone had the ecological footprint of people in the lowest-footprint OECD nation (Romania), we would still need three Earths to support everyone at that standard of living (Global Footprint Network, 2024). Finally, at least for now, most teachers lack the scientific knowledge needed to understand or teach well about the global metacrisis.

Factors that will facilitate transformation

Despite those obstacles, massive changes in education and society are inevitable. Why? The health of ecosystems and societies is unraveling, so more and more people will discover that things are worse than they realized, and modern civilization is in serious trouble. Indeed, younger generations are painfully aware that this civilization isn’t working: a survey of 10,000 16–25-year-olds in 10 countries found that a whopping 56% believe that humanity is doomed (Hickman et al., 2021). Nevertheless, because most of those in power will resist a transformation of civilization, these goals will usually need to be infused into P-16 education without official sanction. Helpfully, many education systems have expanded ecological or social justice curricula, thus creating approved courses into which crisis-aware educators can infuse these desperately needed goals.

Sequence in which to teach these goals

Both logic and my own experience dictate that we should teach the first six goals first. Why? People do not care about solutions until they believe there is a problem, and few will accept a transformation of this highly pleasurable civilization until they realize that it is the core features of modern civilization that are causing this unraveling. However, teachers should strive to meet Life Goal #15 (basic needs satisfaction) every day.

Challenges for teachers and teacher educators

Having taught hundreds of future teachers and practicing teachers about the global metacrisis, it can take years for most adult students to develop a decent understanding of both the metacrisis and the needed transformation of society. This is understandable for many reasons. First, adults’ brains have been deeply conditioned to believe the stories underlying modern civilization, so it can take years to de-construct people’s current worldviews and construct a profoundly different one. This is less of an obstacle when teaching younger students. Second, for most people, the systems thinking needed to understand all this also takes many years to develop. Third, seemingly endless myths bubble up which must be addressed and de-bunked before students will accept what we are teaching them. These myths include false beliefs that a warmer planet would be better, more grass-fed cattle would heal ecosystems, infinite growth is possible, technology or recycling will fix all of this, renewable energy is “green,” vast inequality is just human nature, and that we can hang onto highly industrialized economies and achieve sustainability. Another challenge is that students watch teachers carefully to see if they are personally serious about the global metacrisis. I wouldn’t want to try preaching about the need for others to change their lives if I couldn’t share with my students the ways in which I have reduced and am still gradually reducing my ecological footprint (e.g., vegan diet and reduced use of plastics). Finally, people’s fears about these crises can be overwhelming, so dealing sensitively with students’ emotions about all this is essential. Even so, some students will occasionally tune out because it is so overwhelming.

Supports for crisis-aware educators

Thankfully, there are many supports and tools for those wanting to teach about the global metacrisis and the healthiest responses to it. First, from the climate crisis to biodiversity loss, pollution, and the toxic effects of vast inequality, the science overwhelmingly supports what we are doing. Indeed, the leading scientists have been warning the world for decades that transformative change is needed (e.g., Catton, 1980; Kendall, 1992). Second, students want to know what’s going on and how to respond. Many of my university students had been scared about these crises for years and were gratified—even thrilled—that someone was finally teaching about them. Even many young children are aware of and concerned about some aspects of the metacrisis, often pollution, endangered species, or struggling families. Third, students’ fears about the global metacrisis can be addressed by growing networks of mental health professionals outside the classroom while inside classrooms, educators can use the tools of trauma-informed education (e.g., Oehlberg, 2014). Fourth, there is a rapidly growing body of helpful print and audiovisual teaching resources. For example, I have collected hundreds of children’s books that I use in teacher education classes; books that address aspects of the global metacrisis and best responses to it (Wheatley, 2022a). Similarly, there are some wonderful free online print and video resources for teachers. One caveat: Reflecting the siloed thinking of modern civilization, most solutions-oriented books and videos promote undersized solutions that don’t communicate the need for systemic change. It has been Indigenous scholars and content creators who have most consistently emphasized the need for transformative change.

Meanwhile, there are multiple theoretical lenses and related practices that support the type of education that I simply call life-based education. First, decades of research into self-determination theory provides guidance for meeting students’ psychological needs (Ryan and Deci, 2017), but their framework of autonomy, belonging/relatedness, and competence needs can be strengthened by adding satisfaction of the needs for security, power, and enjoyment. Also, attachment theory and research (e.g., O’Shaughnessy et al., 2023) teaches us how to structure education to help students form an emotional bond with other people, species, and ecosystems. To help nurture attachments to nature in particular, we can do place-based education; studying local lands, ecosystems, and social systems—how they work, and how we can heal them (Sobel, 2013). For example, conducting in-depth research of the river that flows near one’s school (Orr, 2004), then proposing plans for cleaning it up can simultaneously develop emotional attachments to species and ecosystems, understanding of an ecological problem, knowledge of partial solutions, plus social, research, leadership, academic, and advocacy skills. Also helpful for developing attachments to nature is the growing trend of forest kindergartens in which students spend most of the day in nature (Cree and Robb, 2021).

However, to adapt a famous observation by John Maynard Keynes, one of the greatest difficulties in transforming schools and society will not be the new ideas but escaping from the grasp that the old ideas have on our minds. To help crisis-aware educators with this, we need theories and strategies for decolonizing our minds (Glendenning, 1994; Mitchell, 2018) and decolonizing our research (Smith, 2012). One example of such a decolonizing shift in perspective may help. Perhaps the defining blind spot and fatal flaw of modern civilization is that it trains us to judge as effective those policies and practices that reliably achieve some narrow target outcome in the short run (test scores, crop yields, and economic growth) while ignoring the other broad and long-term effects of those policies and practices. As a result, we routinely judge as effective policies and practices that make one valued outcome better in the short run while making three or more equally important outcomes worse in the long run. Thus, to develop systems thinking while also learning why the habits and systems of modern civilization are often counterproductive overall, students can study various sectors of life, comparing narrow and short-term effects to broad and long-term effects, thus discovering this dynamic for themselves. It is a real epiphany for students to discover that across many sectors of life, the approaches that our leaders or even researchers claim are “evidence-based” are often inferior or harmful overall.

How can teachers possibly do all of this? They can’t do it all at once, but one critical shift will help. That is, much of what we now teach in schools is either irrelevant to the global metacrisis or, even worse, the content and methods steer students and society to perpetuate a civilization that is pushing the whole web of life toward collapse. Faced with the accelerating breakdown of ecosystems and societies, much of content, learning standards, and teaching methods from that old world order should put on the back burner, ignored, or simply discarded.

Conclusion

The web of life is rapidly unraveling, but as the opening quote of this article noted, we are still mostly teaching students as if there were no planetary emergency. This reflects a troubling disconnect between current teaching on the one hand and the core purpose of education on the other hand (Afzaal, 2023). That is, most educators go into education to have a beneficial impact on students, but at this perilous moment in human history, educators can have the most beneficial impacts on students by teaching about the global metacrisis and the best responses to it. This article suggested 21 life-oriented goals that can steer schools and society in a direction that will help us save as many people and species as possible while crafting a healthier but profoundly different future for humanity. The changes in schools and society discussed here may seem unimaginable, but humans have created such a dangerous predicament that we now must choose between making changes that seem unimaginable to us now or facing a future that is truly unthinkable. Thus, it is my hope that more educators will start talking about the global metacrisis and using these goals to steer schools and society toward healing and sustainability.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Karl F Wheatley

Karl F Wheatley, Ph.D., is an associate professor of P-5 teacher education at Cleveland State University. His earlier research focused on developmentally appropriate practices, teacher efficacy beliefs, teachers’ emotions, healthy motivations, child-initiated learning, unschooling, and the flaws of the standards and accountability movement. Over the past decade, his research, teaching, and advocacy focused on the ecological and societal crises humanity faces, and the profound implications of those for P-16 education. He helped design CSU’s P-5 teacher education program to better prepare teachers to prepare their pupils to help resolve the urgent challenges that humanity faces.

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