Abstract
The book is a guide to “life-giving” decisions that enable humans to survive the massively disorienting dilemma of climate change, etc. This means adopting a deeply relational cosmology that understands all life and being as boundless energy that living systems draw upon for stability (see Box 6.1, pp. 262–263). Emergence is another critical concept referring to productive disruptions that “shake loose the old frameworks” (p. 393) and “new forms” and stability. Lange states that “Knowing and understanding the transformative process and the role educators can play as transformative leaders are crucial” (p. 253).
Perhaps educators are being asked to accept a vanguard role in questioning and replacing the dominant narratives of consumption and growth. The curriculum for doing so is the book itself, which immerses the reader in a transformative sustainability education experience. In the absence of enactment, the book is a mental and emotional preparation for a real-world experiential application of its many tenets. One can also consider the entire book as a deeply self-reflective exegesis on how formal educators can shed their complicity in unsustainability by contributing to a vision for the radical reconstruction of education, both as an institution and as a teacher.
Chapter 1 calls for a relational shift in the dominant narrative that underlies unsustainability. Chapter 2 explains, convincingly, the fatal trajectory of colonialism and industrialization that threatens the planet currently. Chapter 3 offers the origin story of sustainability, depicting it as a burgeoning social movement that has made recent gains in validity from the growth of climate change as a global problem. However, the link between sustainable and international development frameworks is problematic due to their seeming support for neoliberalism, radical individualism, and incessant growth. Chapter 5, outlines the concept of sustainability education, especially as it reflects adult education's promotion of informal, nonformal, and formal education. Chapter 6 communicates a set of relational theories that share the perspective of the earth itself as a living system. Chapter 7 encourages an adult education-oriented expansive education; one whose institutional goals are transformative to what Lange calls an “epochal shift” in society.
I think that one of Lange's main messages is that if we aren’t currently fighting for racial, gender, and economic justice by rethinking power and politics then we continue to be complicit. She demonstrates how higher education, for example, could adopt Sauve's Commons-Based etc. Environmental Education framework and build a truly transformative sustainability education. Barring this, educators are complicit in socializing students into being non-stop contributors to consumer cultures. As Lange explains on page 141: [P]roblem solving and inquiry approaches, while useful, can still be emblematic of Western ways of know, particularly mechanist ways of knowing.
One of my favorite elements of the book applies Indigeneity as a priority learning strategy. A noteworthy discussion connects shapes to dialogue and architecture, thereby linking relationality and learning. For example, the importance of the circle is exemplified in the yurt, which is described as a cosmologically educative classroom and home. The future is also conceptualized by Indigenous Australians in relation to singing and walking. This rhythm enables a person to both map and memorialize a place. Taken together these examples assert that myth is a guidepost for informing us of a new narrative of progress.
The book dedicates a significant amount of space to adult environmental education. This is exemplified in the text when Lange applies six principles of adult environmental education (Box 4.5) to Indigenous environmental injustice (pp. 158–159). These principles are exemplified in case studies in Mexico, Kenya, and Mongolia, and together these highlight the damage of decolonizing epistemologies and ontologies. Such lessons are key to transformative sustainability education (pp. 223–230) or the process of applying multiple ways of knowing collectively. Additional key elements are expansive notions of the classroom and educators; including the earth as a living system. As Lange succinctly states “Thus, there is a transformation in how we know, in what we know, as well as our way of being or rather (be)coming in the world” (p. 225). The ideal reader then is anyone who is interested in the role that education could play in achieving a sustainable society.
More author insights into incorporating the earth as a living system into classrooms would be great. On page 225, Lange outlines the ontological and epistemological tenets of this cosmology and we learn that she believes that such education should be legitimated through ties to an institution while simultaneously remaining open to pedagogies that support transformative learning, like field trips. If “change is learning” folks co-learn alternative ways of knowing in service to the sustainability movement while concurrently advancing their goals of living a sustainable life.
