Sustainability, Science and Society sort of.

 

“Students in the Sustainability, Science, and Society Program will....

Gain a critical understanding of the concept of sustainability, its contested meanings, multiple dimensions, perspectives and scales.

Gain an in-depth understanding of a specific set of sustainability challenges, including the interconnection between the three pillars of SSS, scales of those challenges, and relationship to personal choices.

Acquire hands-on experience with a suite of analytical tools used to address sustainability challenges.

Recognize that, while analysis is useful, it has limits, and avoid “analysis paralysis”

Gain an understanding of institutional approaches to inform effective policy making and implementation

Will learn to shine a light, instead of cursing the darkness, and offer feasible alternatives to the status-quo.

Appreciate the role of science in society and also that societal decision making involves multiple perspectives and factors that go beyond science.

Be able to persuasively communicate ideas, orally and in writing, to multiple audiences.”

 The outline above is taken from the course description of the four-year university program in which my granddaughter is enrolled. Somewhat more than slightly ambitious, hmm?

 I enrolled in an Arts course at my university in 1960. My aim was to become a high-school teacher and I therefore chose a four-year English Honours major. I think, although I am vague on this, that to earn the Type A Certificate I was aiming for, I had to select a teachable minor. I applied to History and was turned down. I knew my French was abysmal, and that left Latin, which was taught in most academic high schools at that time, although smaller numbers of students were taking it each year - some when they could not select something more relevant and a few from genuine interest.

 I had very little genuine interest in the language as such although Roman history fascinated me. And so I slogged through four years of increasingly difficult Latin authors, with one marvellous course in mostly Roman history as a lagniappe. And taught it for one year. My present claim to fame is that I can translate the Latin mottos on shields and such. Very useful.

 It seems as if, providing the course is as advertised, the granddaughter’s study field might be very useful indeed. It amused me no end that our Thanksgiving Dinner table (and thanks be we could gather as a family) was enlivened by a discussion of grandkid’s Biology experiment, an analysis of ant behaviour. (Both of her parents are Biology professors and her grandfather is an engineer.) Great enjoyment was had by all. A step up, in my opinion, from De Rerum Natura.

There must be an infinite variety of ways in which our interests shape what we learn and what we learn shapes our subsequent interests and occupations. I got into a discussion of how our parliament functions the other day and recognised the truth in the comment that in the past lawyers were, perhaps, overrepresented and that this bias contributed to the adversarial nature of the debate.

 I did a considerable amount of formal debating as a teen and young woman, both in set topic discussion and model parliaments. The key, as I was taught and as I found, was to define your terms. There is certainly a degree of persuasion and sheer stubborn reiteration necessary to making your definition of the terms the accepted base of the dialogue. “Be able to persuasively communicate ideas” is how the Program description presents it. Sadly, what often happens in our modern political discourse is that there is in fact no ‘idea’ as such and we are fed slogans like ‘sunny days’ and ‘build back better’ but not offered substantive actions to choose among nor even any expansion on what is to be built and what will be better. If I have to hear about ‘reconciliation’ one more time, I swear I may end up banging my head on the nearest hard object. Just after asking what the speaker is actually planning to do.

 If anything.

 I feel, some days, an awful lot like the elephant whose photo I took many years ago during a sojourn in Zimbabwe. We were established in a blind above a water hole and there were a lot of species and ages of animals tearing about and generally looking a bit like Aberdeen Street in Kingston last Saturday. And this stolid and stalwart gentleman stood back and surveyed it all.

 Please envision me draping my trunk over a tusk and enjoying the sunshine.