Jeremy Rifkin has planted a seed, an idea, which he has been fleshing out for a very long time. I have been wrestling with his question and have been preoccupied with thinking about its importance. He poses the question of how we as a society can move beyond our current carbon dependant era. He outlines the fact that our society today is built upon a resource that is dug up out of the ground. He identifies the true currency of our modern economy as that of photosynthesis. Using history and the development of the human experience, through tribal relations to the modern first and second industrial revolutions which have been built on the convergence of new energy regimes with emerging communication technologies, Rifkin sets the stage for a new human experience. This new experience is where biosphere conscience guides our decision making and is realized though the convergence of the relatively recent ecofriendly energy regimes and the development of global communication technologies.
Being an educator with the knowledge that the lessons I teach today will be preparing a generation of individuals to face a reality which we the vast majority of the population cannot picture is a daunting task. It is easy to continue with the approaches and understanding that has been developed over the past 400 years through the Enlightment. It is easy to continue with this factory based approach to education where the autonomy of the educational experience is the norm and problems can be reduced to a single solution. It is easy to accept that knowledge is kept in one location, with the keeper of the keys, the leader of the lesson, the teacher at the front. These individuals will let me know if I have made a mistake. They will inform me of the right answer that I need to put on the test. We are completely familiar with the industrious nature of education and continue to prepare students for this future experience. We are called to recognize that this is not going to be the reality of our student's future. Rifkin provides a picture of what this new reality will be through his description of the Third Industrial Revolution.
Rifkin highlights the foundation of this new future as an extension of the empathic bond from the nation state to that of the entire globe. The far reaching nature of globalization has brought the human experience of individuals around the world into each other's living room. There is recognition on the part of the net generation that we can no longer sustain the carbon based dependence for survival as a species both due to the far reaching implications to our fragile coats of varnish on the globe (Bryson, 2004, p. 255), the biosphere, and the mere fact that there is a limited supply. A supply that some predict will be gone by the end of this century. There is a sense of tremendous urgency that we bring about this change and our future citizens of the planet are beginning to sense it.
How must our approach to education change to properly prepare our students for this future? Rifkin devotes an entire chapter to this idea of education and its importance for the preparation of future generations to understand, embrace and essentially save the human species. He highlights the fact that educators need to create experiences that uncover the knowledge that is distributed throughout the class. He recognizes that "[i]f knowledge is something that exists between people and comes out of their shared experiences, then the way our educational process is set up [top-down and autonomous] is inimical to deep learning" (Rifkin, 2011, p. 246). This is echoed by Starratt, 2005 in his essay which examines the moral character of learning and teaching and the related implications for educational leaders. He indicates that a "virtuous approach to learning, [is] an approach that seeks the good inherent in the dialogue between the learner and the worlds he or she is studying" (p. 399). Creating a dialogue that accomplishes this level of authentic learning experience, I feel is embodied in the Reggio Emilia philosophy.
In his opening speech at the world exhibition on the Wonder of learning in Denver Colorado in October of 2008, Harold Gothson, Senior Consultant for Reggio Emilia Institute from Stockholm, Sweden,
highlighted the importance of the Reggio Emilia approach to education and it's contribution to critical questions of our time including: issues of power and empowerment, issues of dominance and participation, issues of hope rejecting despair, issues of us as glocals – thinking global and acting local, issues of schools as a place for democratic meetings, and the issue of the teacher as a community worker and finally the issue of children as true members of citizenship. Reggio Emilia is grounded in 10 principals that achieve all which I feel Rifkin is looking for to ensure the proper preparation of students for the future. Fraser and Gestwick (2002) highlight the principles at the heart of the approach to learning including: the image of the child (competent, strong, inventive, and full of ideas); environment as teacher (designing an environment that facilitates learning); relationships (with the environment, the people in that environment, and its involvement in the co-construction of knowledge); collaboration (amoung teachers, children and teachers, children and parents, children and children and the larger community); documentation (a verbal and visual trace of the experiences and work and opportunities to revisit, reflect and interpret); progettazione (making flexible plans for the further investigation of ideas and devising a way to carry them out); provocation (listening closely to children and devising a means for provoking further action and thought); one hundred languages of children (making symbolic representations of ideas and doing so through a number of different media; and transparency ( using light as a symbol of the openness to ideas and theories from other parts of the world) ( p. 11). The fact that Reggio Emilia approach for learning was established in a post war time with the ideal that education at the earliest level was the most important way to change a society, I feel that it lends itself to the future that is embodied by the Third Industrial Revolution and thus can see it as a key component in ensuring the our future.
It is my hope that visionaries that have a voice on the world stage would bring forward the ideas embodied in the Reggio philosophy to the forefront for it is these types of ideas that will strengthen us.
References
Bryson, B. (2004). A Short History of Nearly Everything. Anchor Canada.Fraser, S., & Gestwick,i C. (2002). Authentic childhood: Exploring Reggio Emilia in the classroom. Albany, NY: Delmar- Thomson Learning.
Rifkin, J. (2011). The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Starratt, R. J. (2005). Cultivating the moral character of learning and teaching: a neglected dimension of educational leadership. School and Leadership Management, 25(4), 399-411.
