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.