ABSTRACT
Furlong and Cartmel (1997) remind us that the young people we teach are confronted by an epistemological fallacy. While class, gender and other social relations continue to shape their life chances and the environments in which they live, these relations tend to become increasingly obscure as lifestyles diversify, collectivist traditions weaken, and individual values intensify. Unaccountable and undemocratic powers continue to deny them more sustainable ways of living, yet they are increasingly encouraged to regard the resulting risks, setbacks and anxieties as individual shortcomings that they must solve on a personal basis rather than through politics. Educational reform that promotes greater competition within and between schools to raise narrowly defined standards of attainment reinforces this fallacy and so compounds problems of establishing identity (Klaassen, 1996). It is to be hoped that the introduction of citizenship education will empower young people to reflect and act on a more realistic view of society and thereby become part of the growing movement for strong sustainability.
