Denial is pervasive. First and foremost, it is the political denial or rejection of the idea that climate change is human-caused and a significant threat to our existence. It is also the more quiet, normalized denial of those who know the extent of environmental degradation and climate change yet do nothing. McKenzie noted in a FreshEd podcast from 2019:

…, it is not because we don’t have the scientific understanding of what’s happening. It’s not that we don’t have the technical ability to move to other energy forms and address climate change and mitigate still the worst of its impacts … We’re not taking the action that’s needed because we lack the will, you know, socially and culturally and politically. (3:20)

Education has long been considered pivotal in shaping sustainable futures. Yet Kwauk and Iyengar remind us that education has also been complicit in perpetuating values leading to planetary destruction and inequities. Education therefore can no longer be confined to teaching facts; it must become a practice of reshaping our worldviews, values, and relationships.

When I teach graduate students in Comparative and International Education (CIE), I turn to UNESCO’s Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education (2021). One of its architects, António Nóvoa, described the report as an “invitation”. The challenge is not to undo education systems entirely, but to renew them as a common good, placing relationships, human and more-than-human, at the center (for a more philosophical conversation on education beyond the human, do also listen to Zhao, Carney and Silova). This vision of togetherness in facing a planet in peril also is a central idea in the book Outgrowing Modernity (Machado de Oliveira, 2025). It argues that our current crises are invitations to rethink how we inhabit the Earth: no utopian promises or completely dismantling what already exists. Instead, it is a journey of learning and unlearning.

In my own teaching, I try to make that invitation concrete. Instead of emphasizing grim statistics, I focus on what is happening locally. I find that the assumption that nobody is doing anything about environmental issues leads to despair and paralysis. But that simple move to what is happening around us counters anxiety with hope and a sense of togetherness that Nóvoa talks about. Grounded in my own research at the subnational level, I highlight the initiatives of school districts, NGOs, and even city and community initiatives outside of the education sector that have an impact on schools. And I encourage my students to join in, even in small actions. A beach clean-up for example may not solve the climate crisis. But the experience of rolling up sleeves and working side by side in nature is a lived lesson that sustainability and justice are built locally.

But I don’t stop there. I also emphasize problem-solving and futures-thinking. Through case studies, students grapple in my classroom with real-life scenarios: designing a whole-school approach to sustainability where every student has a different role and priority; creating a school’s adaptation and resiliency plans for floods. These exercises show that there is no single right answer. Collaboration across cultural, political, social, and ecological differences is essential. And just as important, these activities illustrate that sustainability education is not about memorizing facts and solutions but about learning how to act together under uncertainty.

What happens in my classroom ties in with the broader challenges of the field: how do we move from local initiatives to systemic transformation? These practices echo tensions in global policy debates. Kwauk and Iyengar warn that international frameworks like SDG 4.7 risk becoming a “kitchen sink” of noble aspirations: gender equality, global citizenship, sustainability. And McKenzie notes that measurements are mostly limited to whether curricula include climate change, a low bar that ignores not only the depth of what students learn, but also whether students act on what they learn.

These debates unfortunately unfold against a political backdrop that often undermines this educational ambition. In the United States, the Trump administration dismantled environmental and climate policies, withdrew federal funding, and mocked youth activism. Elsewhere, different forms of denial and delay continue, slowing transformation in education, and withholding the knowledge and competencies students need to tackle complex and interconnected challenges.

This is where CIE must rise to the challenge. Our field has long examined how education policies travel across borders and how inequalities persist. Today, it must also build the problem-solving and futures-thinking competencies the climate crisis demands. We cannot limit ourselves to theories and analyzing policies. We must also model and teach how to collaborate across our differences to shape workable solutions. I hold on to the idea that education can be the bridge between despair and action, between denial and courage. As Outgrowing Modernity reminds us, we need to hold space for the “multiple moving layers of complexity” of our being and beings around us (p.18). To outgrow denial is to acknowledge that the very paradigms of endless growth and extraction are what brought us here, and that education is an extraordinary tool to help us unlearn, and learn to transform and adapt to a rapidly changing world.

November 1, 2025