Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Development in the USA
This chapter provides a review of the historical accomplishments and the current challenges for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Early Childhood in the USA. Specific references are made to progress being made with regard to environmental edu
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Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Development in the USA Cathy Mogharreban and Shannon Green
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Introduction
Right now, in the second decade of the 21st century, preparing our students to be good environmental citizens is some of the most important work that any of us can do. It’s for our children, it’s for our children’s children, and it’s for generations to come. (Education Secretary Arne Duncan at the Sustainability Education Summit, held in Washington D.C, September 21, 2010)
This quote is taken from the transcripts derived from a 3-day summit mandated by the US congress to bring the US Department of Education (2011) together with leaders from higher education, business, labor, and NGOs to build a vision for education’s role in sustainable development. Like other US initiatives, sustainability was defined importantly, but narrowly, as green economic development, and the educational partners identified were secondary educators and institutions of higher education, i.e., universities and colleges. Important as this initiative might be, collaborators in Education for Sustainable Development know two things. The first is that sustainability is more than “going green.” It is a complex and evolving topic that must include the natural environment, human diversities and identities, and a more balanced world economy. The second is that ESD must begin in the earliest years as a way to lay the foundation for seeing and responding to the world through a lens of fairness, acceptance, respect, and innovation. Early childhood education has a particularly salient place in creating such a foundation. Early childhood educators work with the youngest citizens and their families, and there is no other time throughout a child’s schooling that parents and families will be as connected to school as when their children are young. C. Mogharreban (*) • S. Green Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 J. Siraj-Blatchford et al. (eds.), International Research on Education for Sustainable Development in Early Childhood, International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development 14, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42208-4_12
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C. Mogharreban and S. Green
Context of ECEC ESD’s Place in Early Childhood Education
Pramling-Samuelsson (2011), an international advocate for ESD in ECE, supports the notion that early childhood is a critical time for the introduction of ESD, noting that young children are susceptible to values transmission and are ready to internalize the messages of ESD. The formation of value systems regarding our interaction with the earth and its living creatures, including humans, is developing regardless of whether we are intentionally implementing ESD or not (Bently and Reppucci 2013; Boutte 2008). These fundamental values are being formed in early childhood contexts today and serve as the foundation in which the accepted social values of tomorrow are built
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