This paper is written in response to the Keynote Adress on the Earth Charter presented by Peter Blaze Corcoran at the EEASA 2003 Conference in Namibia. It draws attention to the significance of ethical debates in education and emphasises the need for careful attention to the way in which educators approach values education. In particular the paper considers the Earth Charter critically, and notes that while there is much value in the principles of the Earth Charter for guiding educational practice, educators should also consider some of the dilemmas of simply appropriating univeral ethical frameworks to guide practice

Van Harmelen, U

van Harmelen, Ursula

South East Academic Libraries System (SEALS)

 2003 Environmental Education Association of Southern AfricaAbstract This paper is written in response to the Keynote Adress on the Earth Charter presented byPeter Blaze Corcoran at the EEASA 2003 Conference in Namibia. It draws attention to thesignificance of ethical debates in education and emphasises the need for careful attention to theway in which educators approach values education. In particular the paper considers the EarthCharter critically, and notes that while there is much value in the principles of the EarthCharter for guiding educational practice, educators should also consider some of the dilemmasof simply appropriating univeral ethical frameworks to guide practice.IntroductionIn Africa we have a tradition of lauding worthy achievements through praise singing. My firstresponse to this paper is to praise Professor Blaze Corcoran for having the courage to expressand fight for his convictions at a particularly difficult time in global history. I would also like totake this opportunity to praise the people, organisations and nations who over time haveworked and are working through environmental education for a better world. I praise thearchitects of the Earth Charter for articulating the vision that has been presented.Visions are important. They are able to inspire. They are able to unite. Above all, they areaffirming – they are affirmations of our ‘humaneness’, they are affirmations of humans asrational and ethical beings. Every once in a while a vision that has considerable power isarticulated. The Earth Charter is such a vision. Challenging such visions is tantamount tochallenging apple pie and motherhood.However, I believe that we need also to be fully aware of the potential danger of visions.Great visions have led to more wars, genocide and other crimes against humanity throughouthistory than any other single cause.Visions by their very nature are open to interpretation.While it may be argued that this is an essential characteristic of visions, it is also their mainAchilles heel. I am sceptical of visions and believe they need to be approached warily andsubjected to constant critical scrutiny.In looking at the truly fine ideals within the Earth Charter, I find myself asking how we canchange the rhetoric into reality. I find myself asking what do these statements really mean, whatViewpointEducation, Ethics and Values:A response to Peter Blaze Corcoran’s keynote address,EEASA 2003Ursula van HarmelenRhodes University, South AfricaSouthern African Journal of Environmental Education,Vol. 20, 2003EEASA_11_View1_p124-128  3/10/04  9:52 AM  Page 124EDUCATION, ETHICS AND VALUES   125will they require and from whom, and most importantly what are their implications? I also findmyself asking who and what will really benefit in the long run.My response to this paper is a response to the Earth Charter as a vision in the context ofeducation in southern Africa. In southern Africa we are in a process of freeing ourselves from avision of colonialism. My concern is that if we accept the Earth Charter uncritically we mightbe accepting another form of colonisation that may be even more invidious than the previousone. If education is to have a role it ought to be to develop critical thinking and learners whoare able to question and challenge.My second concern is that the Earth Charter has been linked to and with the notion ofsustainability, particularly that of sustainable development. Sustainability is a slippery notion andis awash with paradoxes. It too is a notion that needs to be used with caution. In particular, it isa notion that cannot be applied as some sort of catch-all concept.The reality is that sustainabledevelopment is also a vision and I question whether the vision of sustainable development andthat of the Earth Charter are necessarily compatible. That they will have dimensions ofcompatibility and congruence is probable, but that they are in the totality of each seen asinterrelated and interdependent is not only questionable, but perhaps not even desirable.In presenting the following response my intention is not to detract from the Earth Charteras an inspiring document, rather in arguing as I do, I hope to add value and perhaps to mitigateany possibility of the Earth Charter becoming just another body of empty rhetoric.Ethics and Education    The incorporation of ethics into formal curricula is acknowledged as a desirable andworthwhile part of the educational endeavour.The problem we continue to face is the issue ofethics as education and ethics as indoctrination. I hold the belief in common with far betterscholars than I will ever presume to be that indoctrination and education as concepts ought tobe mutually exclusive. To impose any ethical framework, no matter how ‘good’ it may be,without subjecting it to constant critical scrutiny and challenge is a denial of human freedom tomake informed choices.The imposition of an ethical framework as a given is to reify not onlythat framework, but to mask possible interpretations of that framework that may in fact becorruptions of the original ideals.Thus, if we were to accept the Earth Charter as a code ofethics without critical and informed analysis this would seem to me to be a form ofindoctrination.Ethics are essentially bound up with the notion of rights. Rights are firstly privileges thathave to be earned, secondly there can be no rights without responsibilities, and thirdly rightsonly have worth if there are measures that ensure that they can be upheld. The fourthcharacteristic of rights is, however, the most problematic – that is that rights all too oftenimpinge on and negate other rights. In looking at the Earth Charter my concern is that unlesswe examine it and teach it through a critical analysis of rights, responsibilities and freedoms, wemay well be opening a Pandora’s box.By all means let us use the ethical framework of the Earth Charter in our educationalendeavours. But let it be one set of ethics that should be explored and examined alongside anyEEASA_11_View1_p124-128  3/10/04  9:52 AM  Page 125126 URSULA VAN HARMELENother set, so that if individuals do subscribe to this particular ethical code they have done sobased on an informed and reasoned choice, so that they understand their choice, its implicationsand its consequences.This to me provides added value. Upholding a view based on rational andindependent understanding in its fullest sense ought to be the only basis for espousing aparticular value. It is educationally unsound for curricula to be swept along in the wave ofcurrent enthusiasms, visions and ideals. Accepting something because it is the best currently onoffer is fine providing its acceptance and incorporation into the curricula conforms to the tenetsthat underpin education and not indoctrination.Environmental education, as all forms of education, is not value-free and, valuable asenvironmental education is, the positioning of environmental education within a particularethical framework is likewise fine, providing that environmental education acknowledges thatthe values accepted as integral to environmental education are open to challenge and scrutiny.Were environmental education to lay claim to holding the moral high ground, this would benot only be highly problematic educationally, but would in fact detract from the intrinsic valueof environmental education. Adopting the Earth Charter and the notion of sustainabledevelopment uncritically as that which is cast in stone is just not on in terms of sound educationpractice.Thus, if the Earth Charter and sustainable development are to be accepted as ethicalapproaches in the context of environmental education in southern African, we need to ensurethat the manner in which we tackle this in education is educationally sound.I suggest that environmental education has the potential to lead and to encourage ourconcerted search for ways to turn the risks, problems and issues into possibilities. In southernAfrica the need for positive and innovative approaches to the multitude of problems we face isenormous and experience would seem to bear out the futility of applying common and/orglobal wisdom to addressing these problems.Another role of education in our southern Africancontext would seem to be the development of knowledge and skills that equip people to seekalternative and appropriate solutions and embrace radical change, for we in the south areinherently too conservative in too many areas. Essentially, working for a better world asenvisaged by the Earth Charter is about bringing about change in our practices. Change ishowever inextricably linked to values and therein lies a key challenge facing environmentaleducation. Not only is it necessary to make the values underpinning the desired change explicit,it is necessary to explore the underlying values of existing practices and make these equallyexplicit.If we are to work within an ethical frame such as the Earth Charter, particularly inconjunction with notions of sustainable development, I would argue that unless we firstcritically examine existing social and cultural values that have shaped practice, the ethics onwhich change depends will be lost and the change will be at best be tenuous. It is fairly obviousthat a key dimension of environmental education is about values. Environmental education hasan important role to play in values education, but this role needs to be clearly understood.Thoseinvolved in environmental education should develop a critical understanding of the issuesinvolved in values education processes lest they fall into the trap of indoctrination.EEASA_11_View1_p124-128  3/10/04  9:52 AM  Page 126EDUCATION, ETHICS AND VALUES   127Taking the Earth Charter Forward in a Southern African Education Context Examples of how the Earth Charter has and can be utilised in and through education haveinspirational and pedagogical value. However, in light of my arguments, I suggest that aseducators we must avoid latching on to these as recipes that can be copied. Not locatingteaching approaches in the sort of critical analysis I have proposed is both educationallyunsound and further detracts from the intrinsic value of any ethical framework. Subjecting theideals within the Earth Charter to a critical analysis enables them to be better located withinthe learning situation and context.No value system can be decontextualised. If the ideals espoused by the Earth Charter are tohave merit in a southern African context the starting point should be questions such as:• What do these ideals mean in our context? • Do they (all or some) relate to our national aspirations? What are the possible risks andthreats that working towards these ideals could pose? • What benefits are inherent in working towards these ideals? • What consequences are implied in the short and long term? • Who and what benefits?A key question about the Earth Charter in an educational context is whether it should betaught piecemeal or as a whole. Can and ought educators decide only to focus on certainaspects and to leave out others? If the latter is the case then I ask:Why include the Earth Charteras part of the education experience? Surely all education contains certain of the key values inthe Earth Charter, and only choosing those sections with which we feel comfortable begs thewhole point of the Earth Charter? If the Earth Charter has any meaning in education it issurely the integrated nature of the document in its entirety. It has been presented to us as aholistic concept, implying that each of the ideals contained are interdependent and interrelated.Herein lies a considerable challenge: How can this be ‘taught’ holistically in various educationalcontexts and settings? Ethics in education present a further challenge that goes beyond teaching about them orusing them as vehicles for teaching. Education by its very nature ought to be located in anethical system, and as such model the values through the systemic structures. My final questionthen is whether we can adopt the Earth Charter as a body of knowledge to be taught withoutmaking it the basis of the values to which education systems ascribe, on which they are basedand which they model.Conclusion In concluding my response to the keynote presentation on the Earth Charter (at the EEASAConference in 2003), I reiterate the worth of the document as an articulation of a holisticethical framework. It surely captures the totality of the ‘oughts’ for which all humans shouldstrive, simply because we are humans. I believe that it forms a counterpoint to the greed, themegalomania, the xenophobia and the new right trends that are currently so much a feature atEEASA_11_View1_p124-128  3/10/04  9:52 AM  Page 127the dawning of the new millennium. I believe that as an ethical framework it should be part ofthe educational endeavour, as all education ought to include education in ethics as well as beingbased within an ethical framework.The challenge for educators and education systems is to find a way to incorporate the EarthCharter into education in an educationally sound manner.The issues raised here are just someof the issues that we ought not to ignore in our consideration of the Earth Charter in aneducational context.Notes on the Contributor Ursula van Harmelen is a senior lecturer in the Education Department at Rhodes University inSouth Africa. Most of her work is with postgraduate students in the area of education theory,both in Grahamstown and in Namibia. In addition to lecturing she has been involved in anumber of education evaluations and is currently leading the formative monitoring team of theSEEN project (Supporting Environmental Education in Namibia). She has co-authored a seriesof textbooks for the new South African curriculum in the learning areas Life Skills and Humanand Social Sciences. Email: U.vanharmelen@ru.ac.za.128 URSULA VAN HARMELENEEASA_11_View1_p124-128  3/10/04  9:52 AM  Page 128

Education, ethics and values : A response to Peter Blaze Corcoran’s keynote address, EEASA 2003

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