Cradle to Cradle
Remaking the way we make things should apply to education and the multitude of environments in which education exists and functions. The contemporary paradigm for education isn’t Cradle to Grave because most of our societal commitment to education barely extends past age 25. Where it does it is singled out with some label like “Adult Education” and its basic formulation is modeled after the K-12 or K-16 fixture of the classroom where a “teacher” stands at the center or head of a class assembled administratively for the purpose of imparting knowledge and perhaps a skill or two over a prescribed time block and with some type of evaluation about what happened in that time block.
We can do better by recognizing that even before the Cradle, development begins to form a foundation of acquisition of skills, knowledge and attitudes in a cycling spiral of growth that greatly surpasses any demarcated age and transcends generations of life. This embraces an idea called Cradle to Cradle by William McDuunnough and Michael Baungart in their book subtitled Remaking the Way We Make Things. This book is all about architecture, design and material science recognizing that our ecosystems are vulnerable, materials never go away, and there are limits to growth. But ecosystems can be better conserved if we find ways to recycle materials and remake what we need from the artifacts and debris of human existence.
Humans exist on our planet as guests of green plants and in all ways dependent upon sunlight. Our minds are fueled now by a recognition that as a species we dominate nearly every crevase or niche on the planet even places like the ocean or Antarctica that are not permanently colonized by humans. Where we live and have lived we have generally found a way to make a mess of the environment and with out incredible fossil fueled technologies we have managed to pollute our atmosphere with CO2 and CH4to a point of global concern. Things are heating up and causing a multitude of problems. Extinction of animal and plant species is underway and accelerating. Our dominant species Homo sapiens has a responsibility that cannot be assumed or executed by any other species. We had better get serious about our own survival. Travel to the moon, Mars and beyond is an unrealistic—stupid—solution. Period.
Our way forward is through education and recognition of Education’s Ecology. This, at the very least, means recognizing that education never ends and is generational. At its most simple level it is about acquiring knowledge useful to ourselves and others. That is a matter of acquiring qualification for something generally regarded as vocational—getting a job to support another generation or a family. We live with others so our education prepares us for conjugal with socialization and related ethics. Self is often subordinated but occasionally emerges as some hard to grasp subjects called ourselves. Everything that goes into qualification, socialization and subjectification is the result of time and space—an environment tht is never replicated or replicable—an ecosystem—our personally unique and dependent ecosystem. Our home space and our time alive in the space is a myriad, uncountable array of systems—systems of systems—in which connections and relationships are of paramount importance because these connections and relationships ultimately determine our qualifications to contribute, social conditions and who we are and who we become. Our being is never nothing until nothing is what we are and nothingness is means we are no longer alive.
Emerging rom a Cradle until entering a Casket we constantly create emergence in the form of relationships. That is our Ecology. Its design is entirely up to each one of us.