This paper argues that modern education is premised upon urban industrial society, and that this has been conceived around a false notion of progress which perpetuates fracture between people and planet. If education maintains this illusion of progress whilst ignoring the reality of environmental meltdown it serves no reliable purpose in…

In this short discussion article I develop some earlier writing on the theme of education, improvement and sustainability (see references). It builds upon my primary criticism of the school improvement movement that it is accustomed to thinking of education as good in and of itself. As David Orr suggests candidly in his essay in the early 1990s,…