ABSTRACT
This chapter is grounded in our collective experience of making sustainable
development a major theme in our teaching. The four of us, all faculty in the
humanities and social sciences at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML),
support fully our university’s public commitment to sustainable development as a
central element of its mission. We have found, however, that education for
sustainable development has been limited by the assumption that the meaning of
sustainability is self-evident and universal. Our experience has led us to recognize
that we cannot successfully teach about sustainable development without first
addressing the meaning of the concept itself. We argue here, from the perspective
of our own disciplines, that sustainability is fundamentally a moral and political
question. Many corporations are embracing themes related to sustainable develop-
ment in order to demonstrate that they are good corporate citizens; at the other
end of the spectrum is a radical social ecology that sees capitalism as inherently
unsustainable. Education for sustainable development must first acknowledge
the value-laden nature of the concept, and then make explicit the particular values
that are to be taught. Only after an ongoing social dialogue can we arrive at a
consensus on a working definition of sustainable development. This is a task
for which the humanities and social sciences can make a major contribution.
