The Environmental Education Crisis: On the Limitations of Liberal Education in the Climate Crisis

Abstract

Given the current state of climate change and environmental degradation, we must consider the role education should play in preparing the next generation to work towards ending the climate crisis. In response to this question, many educators, scholars, and environmentalists advocate for environmental education. In the context of liberal democracies, environmental education is potentially problematic, as it promotes certain kinds of environmentalist values that ostensibly conflict with the liberal principle of political neutrality in education, or the idea that the liberal state should not promote any particular morality or conception of the good through its educational institutions. In this thesis, I will explore the following questions: what constitutes adequate environmental education in the context of the global climate crisis, and is this view compatible with liberal educational principles? Ultimately, I conclude that problematizing capitalism is a necessary condition for adequate environmental education because of capitalism’s role in the destruction of the environment, and it follows that adequate environmental education cannot be fully compatible with liberal educational principles.