ABSTRACT

As John Dewey and Benjamin Barber remind us, a healthy democracy requires active citizens, but individual action alone is insufficient to effect democratic change. In this chapter I consider the wider lessons of the New Zealand case for our understanding of the paradox of citizenship as personal responsibility, and the limits of a SMART approach to environmental education. I offer the social handprint as a way to think about the alternative SEEDS of ecological citizenship for children and adults. In closing, I reflect on the dramatic impact of the earthquake which followed this study and now confronts Christchurch children with complex, ongoing environmental and democratic changes.