A New Literacy: Sustainability

Barbara Sudick, Nierenberg Chair, Carnegie Mellon University

I will present sustainability as a new literacy. This work is based on the idea that literacy (the ability to master and use the skills needed to communicate and contribute to society) is ideological and exists in a fluctuating context with associated values.

There was a time when literacy meant simply knowing how to write one’s own name or recite a scripture passage. In more recent times, literacy has commonly referred to one’s ability to read and write a simple sentence in one’s native language (a concept in part derived from Gutenberg’s 15th century invention of the printing press, which uses movable type). Then, technological advances in the late 20th century required visual and computer literacy to meet the demands of the information age.

Today’s changing complex social and global contexts call for new systems-based literacies. Sustainability (the ability to meet the social, economic and environmental needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs) has emerged as an essential and practical capability for the 21st century. Since sustainability is largely value-driven, understanding the associated ethics (or rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions) is a necessary part of achieving competence with this new literacy.

I will venture to discuss how sustainability fits within the cultural, political, and historical contexts of local communities and how we might use indigenous knowledge (the local knowledge that is unique to a culture or society) to teach this new literacy.

Watch the video of the presentation here: http://www.socialstudiesconference.org/node/223