Educating for a living planet

For decades, enrolment, infrastructure, teacher training, learning outcomes have dominated our educational debate

For decades, concerns such as enrolment, infrastructure, teacher training and learning outcomes have dominated our educational debate. These remain essential priorities, but they concern the machinery of education rather than its purpose. Before deciding how to improve education, we should first ask what education is ultimately meant to achieve.

Modern education has given humanity extraordinary scientific knowledge, technological innovation and longer, healthier lives. Yet it has also produced an uncomfortable paradox. Though we have made remarkable strides in progress, the Earth is becoming increasingly less liveable not only for human beings but for countless other species. Canadian education philosopher Edmund O'Sullivan argues that contemporary education suffers from a "loss of the cosmological sense" – a diminished understanding of humanity's place within the larger community of life. In his view, today's environmental crisis is also an educational crisis because schools shape not only what we know, but how we relate to the Earth.

Consequently, the Earth has become a commodity – a collection of items to be bought and sold. Rivers become water resources; forests, timber; mountains, mineral deposits; coastlines, real estate; wetlands, reclaimed land; glaciers, reservoirs; oceans, fisheries; and wildlife, economic assets. Historian Henri Frankfort captured this transformation by contrasting the modern view of nature as an 'It' to be analysed and exploited with the ancient understanding of it as a 'Thou' – a relationship rather than an object. Once nature is reduced to a commodity, its destruction in the name of development becomes easier to justify. Our schools teach students how to make a living. They devote far less attention to teaching them how to keep the planet alive.

Scientists warn that biodiversity is disappearing at a pace comparable to the Earth's great mass extinction events, the last of which occurred about 65 million years ago. Whether or not every comparison proves exact, the warning is unmistakable: humanity is placing unprecedented pressure on the planet's life-support systems.

These realities are no longer distant. The catastrophic floods of 2022 affected an estimated 33 million Pakistanis. Lahore's recurring smog ranks among the worst in the world. Rising temperatures, shrinking glaciers, seawater intrusion into the Indus Delta, groundwater depletion, heatwaves, mangrove loss and land degradation are reshaping lives and livelihoods. Yet these challenges remain surprisingly peripheral to the educational imagination.

This is not an argument against science, technology or modernity. Their contributions to human progress are undeniable. The problem is that schools continue to reward marks, grades, rankings and economic success far more than ecological responsibility, cooperation and an understanding of humanity's dependence on nature.

As writer Lesley Hazleton observes, the Quran describes Paradise 36 times as "gardens watered by running streams" – an enduring image of abundance sustained through harmony with nature. During a conference on AI, Sindh Education Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah recalled watching snakes in their natural habitat while growing up in Thar. Today, many children in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad know smartphone screens better than the stars above them. Few recognise native birds, trees or the rhythms of the natural world. We seldom protect what we no longer know intimately.

Perhaps the time has come to move from the ideal of conquering the Earth to becoming a community with it. The real challenge is not simply to build better schools but to cultivate a different educational vision – one that values scientific excellence and economic progress while recognising that human prosperity ultimately depends on the health of the living world. Education should prepare children not only to earn a living, but also to ensure that the world they inherit remains worth living in.