The World Becomes What We Teach: Educating a Generation of Solutionaries Contributor(s): Weil, Zoe (Author)

How can we create a just, healthy, and humane world? What is the path to developing sustainable energy, food, transportation, production, construction, and other systems? What's the best strategy to end poverty and ensure that everyone has equal rights? How can we slow the rate of extinction and restore ecosystems? How can we learn to resolve conflicts without violence and treat other people and nonhuman animals with respect and compassion? The answer to all these questions lies with one underlying system--schooling. To create a more sustainable, equitable, and peaceful world, we must reimagine education and prepare a generation to be solutionaries--young people with the knowledge, tools, and motivation to create a better future. This book describes how we can (and must) transform education and teaching; create such a generation; and build such a future.

 

Review Quotes:

The World Becomes What We Teach may be the most important book, with both the simplest and most powerful answers, to address the challenges we face in our world effectively, meaningfully, and positively. If we heed Zoe Weil's call to educate a generation of solutionaries, we will witness the unfolding of a truly just, compassionate, and healthy world. Read this book for the sake of any children you love and the future of us all.

--Matt Goldman, Co-founder Blue Man Group and Blue School

In light of the need for lifelong learning in a changing world, Zoe Weil's call to 'adopt a more relevant and meaningful purpose for schooling; make schools real world- and solutionary-focused; and prepare teachers to educate their students to be solutionaries, ' is logical and essential. The evidence is clear that this kind of teaching and learning is already happening. There are a great many stories of children and young people contributing to a healthy, humane, and sustainable future through school, and many examples of what educators can do to make this happen. Zoe illustrates why schools need to change and then shows us what the new narrative looks like. It is compelling. This book will change you

--Jaimie P. Cloud, President, The Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education

This book takes on conventional reformist thinking, unfetters the educational imagination, and repositions the very notion of 'relevance' in schooling to meet the critical issues of this era on Earth. Zoe opens a doorway onto a new landscape for teaching, learning, the development of curriculum, and the purpose of schooling itself. Then she hands us a map, a GPS, and travel guide. This book, once well dog-eared and coffee-stained, should grace the shelves of any educator or transformational leader truly committed to children, the Earth, and a just, sustainable society.

--Khalif Williams, Director, The Bay School