Education
Educating for the World We Need
A note on how this was written This following text was born from a collective process during the Feminine Futures webinar, hosted by Local Futures and inspired by Thais Mantovani’s presentation on regenerative education. Participants from around the world were invited to reflect, dream, and write together. The words below are a weaving of many…
Read MoreCelebrating the Life of Stephan Harding, Gaian Scientist and Friend of Local Futures, 1953-2024
The much-loved and respected Gaian scientist and Head of Holistic Science at Schumacher College, Stephan Harding, passed away on September 2nd at the age of 71. Stephan was a cherished friend and a close collaborator over three decades. I met Stephan when I was teaching at Schumacher College just after it opened in 1990. We…
Read MoreThe Caravan of Hope: Uncovering a Localising Japan
To many, Japan is a poster child of globalisation. With its commercial boom and bustling megacities, it’s a vision in neon, characterised by high technology, consumerism, and ruthless capitalist competition. But fissures in the country’s modernising dream run deep: rising poverty, environmental decline, food insecurity, and, infamously, an epidemic of youth suicide and depression that…
Read MoreCollecting seeds to restore prairie grasslands
Laughter and the chirping of grasshoppers mingled on a mild August morning as several young women, members of the Aaniiih and Nakoda tribes, searched for sweetgrass, running vegetation through their fingers as they tried to determine whether they held satiny sweetgrass or rough sedges. One held strands of sweetgrass in her mouth as the plant’s scent, reminiscent…
Read MoreCommunity-oriented life at human scale
The documentary Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh (John Page, Chris Breemen, Helena Norberg-Hodge & Eric Walton, 1993) provides an excellent introduction to the local, human scale traditions in Ladakh, and how local communities have been affected by the industrialised notion of “progress”. The observation that consumer culture as portrayed in advertisements and Western media appeals…
Read MorePost-pandemic development: a Ladakhi perspective
A week before the announcement of the Janata [public] Curfew slated for March 22, 2020, I spoke with a 43-year-old close relative in her village in Leh, Ladakh, by phone from Delhi. Around that time, the news of rising infections from the novel coronavirus coming in from China, Italy and Iran were ominous. Ladakh had…
Read MoreEducation, jobs and capitalism
American capitalism has a hate-love relationship with the nation’s schools. On the “hate” side is a stream of complaints from business leaders and organizations about the many students, particularly in city schools, who fail achievement tests, are high school dropouts or, if they complete high school, do not have the academic qualifications for college and…
Read MoreJacques Ellul: A Prophet for Our Tech-Saturated Times
By now you have probably read about the so-called “tech backlash.” Facebook and other social media have undermined what’s left of the illusion of democracy, while smartphones damage young brains and erode the nature of discourse in the family. Meanwhile computers and other gadgets have diminished our attention spans along with our ever-failing connection to…
Read MoreBulldoze the Business School
Visit the average university campus and it is likely that the newest and most ostentatious building will be occupied by the business school. The business school has the best building because it makes the biggest profits (or, euphemistically, “contribution” or “surplus”) – as you might expect, from a form of knowledge that teaches people how…
Read MoreCTRLshift: An Emergency Summit for Change
In Britain, these days, all the essential endeavors that are supposed to promote general wellbeing and what is known as “civilization” are, it is widely agreed, in crisis: health and social services; housing; education; energy; transport; and of course, though successive governments haven’t taken it seriously, agriculture. Oh yes, and then there’s “the environment” –…
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