<P><FONT color=#33711E><STRONG>Plenary Session 2: <br>Regional Perspectives on ESD</STRONG></FONT></P>
Rainbow Room, 5th Floor
11:00-12:00
Keynote Address:
Re-claiming education for sustainable development: a Pacific perspective
Konai Thaman, Professor, University of the South Pacific, Fiji
This paper suggests that until the missionaries introduced Western-type schooling in the early part of the 19 century, the aim of Pacific indigenous education was survival and sustainability. The education system introduced by the missionaries still exists today. This type of education de-emphasizes and devalues indigenous forms of education, together with the values that underpin them and their success indicators. The introduced form of education emphasizes decontextualised and theoretical learning, encouraging the unsustainable exploitation of natural and social resources, and the development of systematized selfishness among nations and people. This paper provides recent examples of attempts by some Pacific educators and researchers to re-orient teaching and learning to Pacific values and frameworks, and describes how these attempts are a response to increasing under-achievement of students in school and university, as well as to increasingly violent behaviour, especially among young people.
Download the paper (word, 70kb)