A Study on Education for the Anthropocene from Uttarakhand, India

Abstract

An embrace of non-hegemonic thinking will strengthen the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of education and activism in the Anthropocene. Lakshmi Ashram, a modest girls’ school in the Himalayan slopes of Uttarakhand, India, gives an object lesson in thinking differently: in an imbrication of education/research/activism. This essay highlights a continued lack of attention in the literature to local, cultural and place-based diversity in transformational learning for a sustainable community. However, the core topic in this piece is not one of critique but rather one of a Himalayan approach to establishing the educational circumstances for transformation in thinking and conduct in a linked socio-ecological society. Writing across an international space, the two writers outline their ethnographic approaches, analysing the long-term influence of a Lakshmi Ashram education on students and embodying the school's educational experience. A fluid flow of socio-material practice between teaching, research and activism in the school’s educational approach points to a Gandhian philosophy-in-action that is worth contemplating a contribution to global educational praxis in the Anthropocene. In sharing this account of one tiny school’s pedagogical philosophy, the writers aspire not towards ideological posturing but towards providing new possibilities in thinking differently in education.