Beyond colonial-capitalist logics: reimagining the aims of education through degrowth and reviving the commons

The climate crisis has created an urgency to teach about climate change and work with young people to respond to the impacts of climate destruction. This urgency, however, risks overlooking or superficially considering the colonial-capitalist logics that drive the impending ecocide. This paper is premised on the perhaps counter-intuitive idea that we must turn our attention away from climate change to provide an appropriate educational response to it. In this conceptual paper, we first examine three manifestations of colonial-capitalist logics that drive educational aims and environmental destruction: growthism, exhaustion and alienation. This demonstrates how even well-meaning environmental sustainability education may inadvertently contribute to the ‘planetary crisis’ it is attempting to address. Second, we offer two ethico-political speculative experiments in alternative logics: degrowth and the commons. We argue that these offer openings towards reshaping the aims of education, for relations that will sustain, revive and replenish the Earth and our societies.