Abstract:

Facing the increasingly severe ecological crisis of Anthropocene, education is expected to be an effective means to improve the living environment of human beings. However, modern environmental education has not led to a better world. In the UNESCO-commissioned report Learning to Become with the World: Education for Future Survival, Common Worlds Research Collective calls for reimagining and reconfiguring education that is shaped by Western dualism and anthropocentrism, which separate humans from the rest of the world. It advocates humans' learning to become with the world around us as an integral part, in order to achieve ‘ecological justice’. This report concisely embodies the concerns and ideas of common worlds pedagogies, which mainly draws on post-humanism, eco-feminism, and aboriginal indigenous cultures. While Chinese philosophical tradition shares characteristics with common worlds pedagogies, its uniqueness in ecological aesthetics may deepen the thinking of the relationality between human and non-human beings, and the way that education can contribute to their harmonious co-existence.

Key words: UNESCO, ecological justice, Anthropocene, future education, common worlds pedagogies, Chinese philosophy