Sustainability at schools

What do we learn when we attend school? How does it affect us? Do we really change? Are we being unsustainable because schools do not teach us how to be sustainable? Sustainability has become one of the answers to solve the problems our society has caused: climate changes, depletion of the earth natural resources, and so on. Therefore, educating ourselves about sustainability is imperative. One of the series of the conference was hold at the University of California, Davis on October 21^st, 2009 by Doctor Geoffrey Chase. The main topic of this conference was “Sustainability Across the Curriculum: Stories and Strategies for Change,” which is seeking to educate the society more about sustainability.

Dr. Chase emphasized his conference in the importance of designing the curriculum so that students became more aware of sustainability. Then, why is it so important to emphasize it? Well, sustainability is not a topic that can be cover only through architectural buildings or sites. It involves more; it encloses economic, social, and environmental impacts. It can affect the society in two complete opposite ways: positively or negatively. Every person can be sustainable by allowing themselves to learn how to be more sustainable, like for example instead of using plastic bags for trash, they can change those plastics bags to paper bags, which will disintegrate in a shorter amount of time in comparison with the plastic bags. Then, by doing so they will allow the cycle of compost to process faster. Thus, little changes that a person can do can help to improve slowly the damage we have caused to the earth, which is the main goal of this conference.

It is important to understand how by designing differently the curriculums of schools it will influence the way current and future students can be more sustainable, which directly affects the society. Then, by re-designing the curriculum, like Dr. Chase it will be the “largest multiplier effect” because the students will influence in each homes and then the communities in where they live. If the design of the curriculum does not change and it keeps to be the way we have it, the world will be further more deplete the earth’s resources and we, the society, will destroy the planet and ourselves by doing so.

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The poster was printed out by UC Davis, Design department