SUSTAINABILITY IN ANTHROPOCENIC TIMES: A DIDACTIC PROPOSAL FOR A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL APPROACH OF PROBLEMS OF SUSTAINABILITY

Abstract

COVID-19 reaffirms that we are living out the consequences of the Anthropocene. In terms of education this affirmation has considerable implications: we must overcome the profound divisions between the fields of Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences while at the same time recognizing the political character of educational and scientific practices.

Sustainability is an idea that potentially embodies the elements that respond to these two challenges, but only distancing ourselves from a technocratic-instrumental approximation and assuming a political approach to the idea. Post-normal science provides an adequate framework for this because the emerging problems present democratic challenges that demand other academic and educational treatment.

Our intention with this text is to contribute didactic material that incentivizes the introduction of this conceptual debate into the classroom setting. Far from proposing a confrontation between the dominant mode of thought, in this paper we propose an argument that seeks to untangle the basic components of our thesis and show the arbitrariness of all the theoretical constructions that result from that. We hope, in this way, to contribute to a transdisciplinary environmental and sustainability education that consists in uncovering the political dimension of this issue, to repoliticize education, transcend the division between relativism and objectivism and, encourage theoretical positioning without determinisms.