Category: Transnational/NGOs

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Davos 2023: Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

It’s that most wonderful time of year again, when the world’s movers and shakers (concerned environmentalists, all) fly their carbon-spewing jets to the resort town of Davos, Switzerland, for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

This year’s WEF theme is, “Cooperation in a Fragmented World,” and the anxiety of the organizers about realizing their dream of global governance (aka “public-private cooperation” within “a new global system”) is palpable.  The WEF claims the “unprecedented backdrop” of this year’s gathering includes:

  • “a climate crisis spiralling out of control”
  • “a growing global economic crisis”
  • “a cost-of-living crisis”
  • “Food Crises”

among other perilous conditions. But fear not, poor countries! The WEF views these calamities as opportunities to press toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals!

Addressing the Current Energy and Food Crises in the context of a New System for Energy, Climate and Nature

. . . . While a global energy transition is under way, further action is needed to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change. Critical measures to accelerate energy transition include decoupling economic growth from energy consumption, particularly in emerging economies, mainstreaming breakthrough technological innovations and addressing equity. Rather than using the ongoing crisis as a pretext to forego policies that support the transition to more sustainable energy sources, this moment should be utilized to develop more ambitious, comprehensive, and sustainable infrastructure investment plans that helps [sic] the world to meet the 2030 targets.

(Emphasis added.)

Translation? The developed economies achieved their prosperity the old-fashioned way, using coal, oil, and natural gas (and more on natural gas in a future post). However, you – “emerging economies” – you must “decoupl[e]” from those effective-but-dirty engines of progress so we can satisfy our green energy fantasies by 2030. (And if you prefer your hypocrisy in a more personalized format, be sure to catch Al Gore (D- Carbon Offsets) at the 1/17 panel discussion entitled, “Decarbonization: An Insurmountable Challenge?”; or noted yachtsman and tax-avoider John Kerry speaking that same day on “Philanthropy: A Catalyst for Protecting Our Planet.”)

Amazing. As a White House chief of staff once infamously said: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

This year’s WEF meeting runs from January 16 through 20.

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The SDGs: “The Very Best in Public Education”?

In Part Five of our look at the SDGs, we noted that the diffuse nature of our education system − thanks to federalism − makes it difficult for our central government to enforce and track progress on SDG 4.7.1. That indicator includes education for “global citizenship.” We have already seen voluntary uptake of the SDGs in higher education. In K-12, the NEA is a primary cheerleader.

According to the Federal government, in 2020-21, the United States had 3 million public school teachers. The nation’s largest teacher’s union is the National Education Association (NEA), and it claims “3 million members.” Even though many of the NEA’s members aren’t necessarily teachers, that’s still impressive reach into US public education.

The NEA has a charitable foundation that “works in partnership with others to promote the very best in public education.” Evidently, “the very best in public education” incorporates the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. It also includes the emotional manipulation of  5- and 6-year-old children.

* * *

In 2019, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the NEA Foundation published a book of lesson plans to promote its vision of education for “global competency.” Creative Lessons to Open Classrooms and Minds to the World cites the World Economic Forum’s list of “Global Risks” (p. 5); impending “climate catastrophe” (id.); and the purported worsening of race relations under Donald Trump (p. 7), among other woes, as reasons why education for “global competency” is urgent. And the authors believe the SDGs provide the perfect framework to educate our children into “global citizenship” as a means of averting certain disaster (p. 136):

Twelve[*] Lessons to Open Classrooms and Minds to the World is the result of a collaborative effort organized by the NEA Foundation to support outstanding teacher-leaders in developing 21st century global curriculum that is aligned with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals – a universal call-to-action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

[* The publication appears to have undergone a renaming somewhere between its first and last pages.] The book’s primary author, Harvard professor Fernando M. Reimers, cites many of his own publications,  dating back to 2009, on the topic of educating for global citizenship. A recurring theme in his work is promoting the right “affect”, or the correct “mindset”, to lead both students and teachers to embrace the United Nations’ goals . In other words, it’s all about manipulating emotions.

Scaring the Children to Save the Planet

Imagine it’s the first day of kindergarten. It can be an anxious time for parents, as well as a  frightening time for children. Some children will be “leaving the nest” for the first time. But as a parent, you know that your child will soon settle in to learn about numbers, colors, shapes, how to tell time, and . . . hunger?

Yes, that’s correct. Through its “Kindergarten Lesson Plans” (pp. 19-28), the NEA Foundation wants to instruct 5- and 6-year-olds on

  • What is Hunger?
  • Who Doesn’t Have Food?
  • Why Is Food a Human Right?
  • Hunger Around the World

(An additional lesson plan, “Lesson 4: Students can generate ideas of how to help fight hunger in their community” (see p. 26) seems to have . . . disappeared. Is it also worth noting that this “very best in public education” document consistently misspells “Kindergarten” as “Kindergarden”? Sure it is (pp. 19, 21, 23, 26).)

The goal of the first lesson is to have children “reflect on what it means to be hungry and explore emotions/behaviors that are tied to hunger”, and to develop “an understanding or empathetic attitude” toward those who are hungry. The NEA instructs teachers to appeal to the children’s sense of “fairness” (“Do you think it is fair that some people in our community do not have food to eat?”), and asks them to imagine not having enough food to eat (“How would you feel if you didn’t have any food to eat when you were hungry?”).

The second lesson is about anti-hunger activism (“Students will be able to identify hunger in their community and what community resources there are to help eliminate it.” “Students will understand that they can help alleviate the problem.”). The suggested teaching technique is borderline abusive:

Show students a blank paper plate and a grocery ad. Explain to the students that they are going to get 6-7 minutes to cut out pictures of food and glue it to their paper plate.

[Then], have the students sit in a circle with their paper plates. Explain to students that 1 out of every 5 children in our country struggle with hunger. Show children this statistic by taking away the paper plate from every 5th child in the classroom.

The children are then asked how having their plate taken away, or seeing their friends’ plates taken away, made them feel, and whether they “think it is fair that some children in our community face hunger?”

The third lesson builds on the activism theme by declaring food to be “a human right for all people”; therefore, “students’ actions can make their school, neighborhood, and the world better by helping make sure everyone has the food they need.” (Truly? They’re 5 years old.)This  lesson uses photos of drooping plants as a (very poor) metaphor for sharing food (“‘If there is only one pitcher of water, how should we water the plants? . . . . Ask students if one plant should get more water than another [maybe, depending on the type of plant!] and try to steer the conversation toward ‘sharing’ the water we have or ‘spreading around less to give all the plants some water [sic]”.) The lesson also tells teachers to show the children a video from an anti-hunger charity that includes images of children sleeping on sidewalks.

The final lesson, for the small children who probably don’t yet know their own address, or how to find their town or city on a map, is “Hunger Around the World.” They are to be shown the “World Hunger Map.” Once the children have “identif[ied] continents that experience the most hunger” (implying Africa and using Kenya as an object lesson), they “will learn that one way to help people that do not have enough food is to share what you have”. And then, the teacher is to impart the lesson’s grand finale (“Conclusion”):

Food is a human right and everyone in the world should have enough food to eat. If we are going to reach the Sustainable Development Goals to help the world, we need to create ways to make things more equitable.

Absolutely. Right after we learn to tie our shoes.

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“Sustainability” Is the New Black

(This is the sixth entry in our series looking at the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda”. To read previous posts, scroll down, or type “SDGs” in the search bar.)

Like fashionistas taking cues from the Pantone “color of the year,”  most major private institutions now embrace some form of “sustainability,” whether in sports ( “NBA Signs UN’s Sports for Climate Action Framework“); entertainment (“At WarnerMedia, we are committed to integrating sustainability into all aspects of our business, content and culture globally”); health care (“Go green at CVS“); retail (“Costco Wholesale Corporation Sustainability Commitment”); financial services (“Bank of America: Our commitment to environmental sustainability”); or technology (Google has a “single mission — to foster sustainability at scale”).

“Sustainability” is the new black.

In education, we have seen that federal government efforts to measure progress on UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (“Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”) and its associated “targets” (including “education for sustainable development” and “global citizenship”) have not been smooth. Nevertheless, the cult of sustainability is alive and well throughout education in the United States. Our first stop is higher education.

“Sustainability” at Top US Universities

To gauge the prominence of sustainability ideology at the university level, a review of the nation’s most prestigious schools is instructive. Of the universities ranked one through ten in the most recent U.S. News & World Report list, all have sustainability offices, goals, curricula, or plans of one sort or another (Princeton; MIT; Harvard; Stanford; Yale; University of Chicago; Johns Hopkins; University of Pennsylvania; CalTech; Duke; Northwestern). For most of these institutions, “sustainability” isn’t simply about recycling, or about reducing the school’s own “carbon footprint;” rather, it’s about both ecology and “equity,” and it concerns the content of both instruction and research. 

For example, MIT’s “Environmental Solutions Initiative” is weaving sustainability and environmental topics into classes required for graduation. Stanford cross-lists courses from its Doerr School of Sustainability within majors such as education, sociology, political science, and within the professional schools; the school says that “[a]cross our activities we are embedding equity, access, and inclusion.” Harvard’s efforts to become “fossil-fuel neutral” take account of “social equity.” Johns Hopkins’ “Office of Sustainability is part of a Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Working Group of the Ivy+ Sustainability Consortium [which] follows the guiding principles of Introspection, Anti-racism, Intersectionality, and Amplification.”

Among the top-rated schools, Yale is the most explicit about its efforts to align teaching and research with the UN’s 2030 Agenda and its SDGs:

In 2015, the Yale Office of Sustainability began looking at how teaching and research at Yale aligns with the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

[ . . . ]

Key Findings

Research at Yale University covers all of the Sustainable Development Goals
Every department or school has at least one faculty member whose scholarship relates to the SDGs
Yale has high participation in research relating to SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 10 (Reduce Inequality), and SDG 16 (Peace and Justice)

To arrive at this conclusion, Yale prepared a “comprehensive database of over 4,000 faculty members that provides insights into how Yale’s scholarly activities connect to the SDGs, [which] can be referenced, filtered, and used to foster connections and action.” The university’s Office of Sustainability memorialized its methods in a how-to guide, entitled “Assessing Research and Teaching Connections to the SDGs.”

According to the guide, this “comprehensive, up-to-date list of faculty members” excluded only emeritus and visiting faculty. (p. 3) It advises that any school adopting the Yale methods should have its “SDG Review Team . . . regularly track” faculty on their SDG alignment. (p. 7)

Though one would hope Yale values academic freedom, the guide notes (without irony) that “(f)aculty members may or may not appreciate being categorized by SDG.” (p. 9) The authors offer advice on how to avoid ruffling faculty feathers:

√ Tip: language matters! Avoid saying that their teaching or research “support” or “advance” an SDG. Use less direct terms like “connect to.”

The report notes proudly (p. 12) that 

Yale was also the lead author on the 2019 International Alliance of Research Universities online publication, Global Priorities, Educated Solutions: The Role of Academia in Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals and led half-day program of the same name in June 2019[.] 

That publication notes that the SDG “mapping” of faculty of the kind done by Yale “is not an absolute or prescriptive process” but “can be a fruitful conversation starter” for those academics who don’t view their work in SDG terms.  (p. 13.)

But perhaps no US institute of higher education promotes the SDGs as thoroughly and as publicly as Carnegie Mellon University.

Carnegie Mellon: SDG-U 

In 2021, Carnegie Mellon University (#22 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings) performed a (second!) full-scale “Voluntary University Review [“VUR“] of the Sustainable Development Goals”, looking at CMU’s “efforts to align [its] education, research and practice with the . . . SDGs” (p. 5). In fact, according to the report, CMU was the first university in the world to engage in such a review. (p. 9)

In 2020, CMU had engaged in a “17 Rooms” exercise, an initiative pioneered by the Brookings Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation to brainstorm ways for the school to support the SDGs (pp. 6, 12). That year, it released its first VUR, and the University Provost “participated in the UN Foundation and Brookings Institution’s side event at the United Nations General Assembly on ‘American Leadership on the SDGs.'” (p. 12) (Brookings and the UN Foundation are the “Force Multipliers” featured in Part Two of our series on the 2030 Agenda.) According to the VUR (p. 9; emphasis added),

While the SDGs include environmental stewardship challenges, they represent a paradigm shift in how the world thinks about sustainability that encompasses reducing inequality; creating peaceful, just and inclusive communities; reducing poverty and more.

CMU’s promotion of the SDGs includes:

        • Incorporating SDG information into fall 2021 student orientation (p. 11)
        • “Mapping” all classes “to all relevant SDGs” (p. 13)
        • Coding the “academic and research activities of faculty members” in an electronic profile that can be used to compare these activities to the SDGs (pp. 13-14)
        • Tasking undergraduates in a class on data analytics and research to “develop an automated approach to analyzing courses using the SDGs”, and offering data tools so the CMU community can “search 14,351 courses from fall 2019 to fall 2021 to see how they relate to the SDGs and make SDG-informed decisions about their courses.” (p. 16)
        • Highlighting “Early Adopters” among the faculty who identify where their work aligns with various SDGs (pp. 18-19)
        • Reaching out to student organizations to “educate [them] about the SDGs and encourage them to engage in the Sustainability Initiative” (p. 21)

Indeed, CMU professor Sarah Mendelson was one of three witnesses to testify at Congress’s “first ever” SDGs hearing on September 15, 2022 (see Part Two).

One could say Yale and Carnegie Mellon are definitely operating within the same “sustainability paradigm.”

From “Mapping” to the SDGs to “Conforming” to the SDGs?

Imagine you are a faculty member (at Yale, Carnegie Mellon, or any university following in their footsteps) whose courses and research projects don’t “map” well against the SDGs. What “actions” would your employer take? How would the “map” be used as a “conversation starter”?

“Mapping” research and course offerings against the SDGs – then making the results public in an “electronic profile” of faculty members – can only have one effect: to restrict future classes and research projects to those that fit the “sustainability” mold. In fact, that is exactly what UNESCO is urging universities to do in a recently-published report on “transforming higher education”:

The report calls on higher education leaders and actors to push for transformations within their institutions, using the report’s recommendations to critically reflect and act on their role for achieving the 2030 Agenda. Higher education institutions must take on a stronger role to tackle the world’s most pressing issues.

Knowledge-Driven Actions: Transforming higher education for global sustainability (from the “Short Summary”). Universities are to “reflect[] on what kinds of knowledge are necessary, [and] whose knowledge is needed” (Foreword by Stefania Giannini); to explicitly incorporate the SDGs into the classroom; and to allow the SDGs to shape research (pp. 82-83). Nevertheless, UNESCO disclaims any intention to restrict academic freedom:

The recommendations of this Global Independent Expert Group are not intended as a counterpoint to the ideals of curiosity-driven, basic research and academic freedom. Rather, HEIs [Higher Education Institutions] should wherever possible facilitate and engage in activities that promote the SDGs. In fact, we argue that it is those very HEIs as free institutions that have the motivation to lead societal change wherever needed to achieve the SDGs.

(p. 77) Perhaps UNESCO doth protest too much.

For an in-depth examination of the threat the “sustainability” paradigm poses to academic freedom in higher education (with a look at the paradigm’s Marxist underpinnings, as revealed in this UNESCO document), listen to Dr. James Lindsay’s New Discourses Podcasts on “The Strange Death of the University” Parts One and Two.

• • •

Although the US isn’t a member of UNESCO, the United Nations sub-agency primarily tasked with promoting the UN’s education agenda, the UN is not idle when it comes to promoting its vision for education in America. Our next look will examine efforts by the UN and others to promote the SDGs in K-12 education.

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UN 2030 Agenda (Part Five): Education and the Federalism Speed Bump

To recap briefly: In 2015, all members of the United Nations, including the United States, signed off on a program called “Agenda 2030,” which includes 17 “Sustainable Development Goals” (the “SDGs”). (For previous posts about Agenda 2030 and the SDGs, go here, here, here, and here.)

SDG 4 concerns education. It directs all nations to educate children and adults in “sustainable development;” as “global citizens;” and with an emphasis on changing “values and attitudes.” However, the United States, by its very structure, impedes the globalist agenda.

The Founding Fathers were not naïve about human nature. They knew tyranny is always just around the corner, and the government of the new United States had to be able to restrain itself. As James Madison wrote in 1788, in Federalist 51,

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. . . . It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

According to Madison, “all hands” (presumably, both Federalist and Anti-Federalist alike) agreed that a “partition of power” was “essential to the preservation of liberty.” (Emphasis added.) Further, “[i]n a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government[.]” However, the United States, as a “compound republic,” would have even more safeguards because the States themselves are sovereign:

In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people.

Yes, it does! Just ask those in the Federal government trying to track US performance under SDG 4 and its related “targets.”

SDG 4 Monitoring Falters in K-12

The Executive Branch of the Federal government maintains a website to track US progress on the SDGs, including target 4.7.1, which looks at the

Extent to which (i) global citizenship education and (ii) education for sustainable development, including gender equality and human rights, are mainstreamed at all levels in (a) national education policies; (b) curricula; (c) teacher education; and (d) student assessment

The reviewers at the sdg.data.gov site (“An official website of the Office of Management and Budget, the General Services Administration, and the US Office of Science and Technology Policy” – aka,  “How many agencies does it take to review an SDG?”) appear frustrated by both this SDG target and US federalism (emphasis added):

The SDG 4.7.1 concept is difficult to define and measure, and it involves a wide array of different concepts and processes that are difficult to reduce to a statistical indicator. Particular with countries with federal education systems, such as the United States, there is no way to measure this indicator with available data even if the concepts were clear. Local and state agencies are responsible for determining student curriculum. Individual schools of teacher education would set the curriculum for their programs.

The sdg.data.gov evaluators (writing in October 2016) looked for a solution to this “round peg in a square hole” problem. They thought they had found one in the student assessment test known as the “PISA.”

The Leaning Tower of PISA

The “Programme for International Student Assessment” (“PISA”) is a test created by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”), another multinational NGO to which the US belongs (and for which the US contributes roughly one-fifth of the budget). The PISA is administered every three years and allows nations to compare the performance of their 15-year olds in reading, math, science, and certain other metrics. In 2018, PISA introduced the newly-developed “global competence” assessment, “inspired by” SDG 4 (OECD; Schleicher introduction), and co-created by the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Sdg.data.gov “strongly recommended” that US policy makers “adopt this metric, rather than proposed indicator 4.7.1” as a “potential framework” for gauging US compliance with SDG 4. This could have been a handy work-around to the federalism “problem,” because the PISA is overseen and administered throughout the country by the US Department of Education.

This potential work-around failed. “The United States . . . did not participate in the assessment of global competence” in PISA 2018, nor was this assessment part of PISA 2022 (the test having been delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic). It remains to be seen whether OECD will again try to test “global competence” in PISA 2025.

Meanwhile….

The use of PISA as a measurement tool might have hit a snag, but that doesn’t mean US supporters of “education for sustainable development” and “global citizenship education” have given up – or even display discouragement.

While it is true that, as the Federal website states, “[l]ocal and state agencies are responsible for determining student curriculum[, and i]ndividual schools of teacher education … set the curriculum for their programs”, there is widespread – and voluntary – embrace of these concepts at all levels of the US education system.

We turn our attention there next.

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A Day Late, Billions of Dollars Short

We here at Based Bytes are a day late in acknowledging United Nations Day (October 24). We should be more on the ball, especially in light of the billions of dollars the United States spends on the organization.  Noster culpa.

Please know that the UN is working hard to, in the words of the Secretary General, “rescue the Sustainable Development Goals.” Interesting word choice.

We will resume our look at the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs’ impact on education soon.

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United Nations 2030 Agenda (Part Four): SDG 4.7 — “Transforming” Education . . . and the World

The modus operandi of the United Nations is to present an impossible-to-criticize wish-list, then to act as though the impossible were somehow achievable (such as SDG 1, “End poverty in all its forms everywhere”; contra Mt. 26:11, “you always have the poor with you”). The devil, as they say, is in the details.

By their very impossibility (“Eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions is an indispensable requirement for sustainable development“), and the fact that, like numbers counting up to infinity, there is no end to the project, the goals run cover for a radical plan to restructure our institutions, in particular, and our culture, more broadly.

This is clearly visible in the realm of education. The closer one looks, the more obvious it becomes that “sustainability” functions as a comprehensive worldview – stated otherwise, as a religion – and that the intention is to use schools as one of the primary vehicles to remake all of society. However, as we shall also see, for the master planners, the United States is a particularly tough nut to crack.

• • •

[Sustainable Development] Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Could anyone possibly object to improving lives through education? Or to the idea that you’re never too old or too young to learn? (Set aside for the time being what concepts might be buried within the terms “inclusive,” “equitable,” and “lifelong learning.”) The overall aspirations appear anodyne; the hidden agenda appears within the “targets” that support this “goal.”

While the bulk of the SDG 4 targets call for expanded educational, all-ages access to “quality” education in broadened, “equitable” ways, Target 4.7 just sounds . . . different:  

 

4.7. “By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development“

https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda (emphasis added). 

The language of this “target” raises many questions:

  • What are “the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development” (which sounds like activism in the classroom)?
  • What is “education for sustainable development”?
  • What is meant by a “sustainable lifestyle”?
  • What is “global citizenship”?
  • How does the UN propose to shape students to in turn shape “culture [to contribute] to sustainable development”?

If “sustainability” is starting to sound suspiciously like a secular religion, and “global citizenship” sounds like a call for one-world government, there is a reason. The roots of these concepts run deep at the UN.

Brave UNESCO World

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is the UN infrastructure designed to promote its more “soft power” means of attaining heaven-on-earth. It  was created in 1945 in the immediate aftermath of World War II to “bring people together and strengthen the intellectual and moral solidarity of humankind, through mutual understanding and dialogue between cultures.” Its “clear vision” is that “to achieve lasting peace, economic and political agreements among States are not enough.” https://www.unesco.org/en/history 

Some families have an outsized impact on world affairs. In the Twentieth Century, the Huxleys of Britain were such a family. Physiologist Andrew Huxley won the 1963 Nobel Prize in medicine.  Writer and philosopher Aldous, in 1932, had published Brave New World, one of the two premier English-language dystopian novels of the twentieth century (along with George Orwell’s 1984). And, most importantly for our purposes, in the years between those singular accomplishments by his brothers, Julian Huxley became the first Director-General of UNESCO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huxley_family

In 1946 in a pamphlet called  UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy, Julian Huxley called on UNESCO to “stimulate the quest . . . for a world philosophy, a unified and unifying background of thought for the modern world.” [p. 41; emphasis added] In fact, Huxley had long advocated for a one-world, secular religion of “evolutionary humanism”.

Thus, the new Director-General sought “a single common pool of experience, awareness, and purpose” for humanity. [p. 17] He believed that such a “united . . . tradition” was the key to mankind’s progress and “that the best and only certain way of securing this will be through political unification.” [p. 13; emphasis added] Therefore, the seeds of a new, secular religion – given form in our time as “sustainability” – and of the push toward “global [as opposed to national] citizenship” were sown at UNESCO from its inception.

This “utopian world-scale political ideal,” though its popularity has waxed and waned since the publication of Huxley’s pamphlet, appears alive and well in Agenda 2030, and in particular in UNESCO’s “Education 2030 Framework for Action,” an initiative to shepherd the implementation of SDG 4. Nevertheless, while the central planners have a grand vision for all our lives (and, judging by their written output, appear to get paid by the word), they can’t always get what they want.

• • •

We Will Get It Right “This Time”

SDG 4 is far from the UN’s only recent education master plan. Before that, there were the education prongs of the MDGs (“Millennium Development Goals”), as well as the EFA (“Education for All”) initiative. Both sets of goals set 2015 as their target completion date, and none was completed on time (though the UN claims the MDGs were responsible for meaningful improvements on numerous anti-poverty metrics in the developing world).

Undaunted, in the Education 2030 Framework for Action, UNESCO member states strode forward “with a sense of urgency” to implement their new, global, and “transformative” plan. Education 2030 Framework, p. 7. Indeed, “[e]very effort must be made to guarantee that this time the goal and targets are achieved.” [p. 22.] Not only that – these goals are even more ambitious than the previous, unrealized goals. In a companion guide to the framework, UNESCO says, 

SDG4 therefore pursues this unfinished education agenda, but also goes beyond. . . . SDG4 continues the EFA focus on quality basic education for all and broadens the agenda further to include concern for equitable access to post-basic education. . . . What is also new to SDG4 is the focus on the relevance of learning outcomes both for the world of work, as well as for citizenship in a global and interconnected world.

Unpacking Sustainable Development Goal 4: Education 2030 Guide, p. 9 (emphasis added). 

The Education 2030 Guide also repeats the definitions used in the overall agenda, and (of course) generates some new acronyms. “Sustainable development” is viewed across “three dimensions – economic, social and environmental”. And the sustainability “agenda” asserts “a universality of principles (human rights),  [and a] universality of reach (focus on equity and inclusion)[.]” [p. 10] As for the acronyms, education for sustainable development is now “ESD.” Global citizenship education is now “GCED”. [p. 14]

SDG 4 Intrudes FAR Beyond Literacy and Numeracy

According to the guide, ESD and GCED can provide people with education that is

relevant, with a focus on both cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of learning. [Via ESD and GCED, “citizens” can acquire the] knowledge, skills, values and attitudes required . . . to lead productive lives[.]

[p. 14, emphasis added.] Linger on that statement for a moment. The UN has its sights set on “transforming” education, from near-cradle to grave, now to include college, university, and vocational training. It also seeks to “transform” the entire global population’s “values and attitudes,” with a focus that includes “non-cognitive aspects of learning” – a.k.a., social-emotional learning, or “SEL.” (We will explore the centrality of SEL to SDG 4 – and to the entirety of the progressive education agenda – in future posts.)

What hubris. 

Whither the United States?

The United States has had an on-again, off-again relationship with UNESCO. At the time of the adoption of the Education 2030 documents, the US was not a voting member. It is currently listed on the UNESCO website as a “Non member.” 

Still, that does not mean that UNESCO cannot promote SDG 4 within the US. After all, the US government in the Obama years “enthusiastically” supported the adoption of Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (as we saw in Part One), and at least a few members of Congress are SDG champions (as we saw in Part Two). So, what does the organization’s advocacy look like in the United States? Have schools, quietly or explicitly, embraced “ESD,” or “GCED?” And has the federal government done anything to implement SDG 4?

Stay tuned.

Agenda 2030 Part One, Part Two, Part Three

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United Nations 2030 Agenda (Part One): Coming Soon to Your Town?

When you think of the United Nations, what comes to mind? How about, maintaining international peace and security? Good answer! That’s the very first purpose listed in the UN Charter. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/chapter-1

Okay, what about promoting “sustainable housing” in Bird City, Kansas, population 450? Or providing the framework for a prestigious American university to judge its course offerings? Or helping to pressure a major American city to hire a “Chief Equity Officer”?

If this all sounds like the UN needs to “stay in its lane,” then you haven’t met the 2030 Agenda.

• • •

They have big plans in Turtle Bay.

According to the UN, we are on a “collective journey” to “[t]ransform[] our [w]orld.” This project goes by the name of “the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda (Article 1, ¶ 3 of the UN Charter opens the door to this.)

The 2030 Agenda was adopted in September 2015, on the occasion of the UN’s 70th anniversary and with the enthusiastic support of the Obama Administration. (“As a former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, I had the privilege to help usher in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. . . . The United States strongly supports the 2030 Agenda, and we are committed to its implementation.” — Former Obama UN Ambassador/current Biden USAID Administrator Samantha Power. https://usun.usmission.gov/remarks-by-administrator-samantha-power-at-the-high-level-political-forum-on-sustainable-development/ )

Let’s peek under the hood.

The Agenda consists of “17 Sustainable Development Goals [the “SDGs”] with 169 associated targets which are integrated and indivisible.” (¶18) It went into effect on January 1, 2016, and all UN member countries pledged to implement the Agenda. (¶21)

Here are the SDGs:

  • Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
  • Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
  • Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
  • Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
  • Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
  • Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
  • Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
  • Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
  • Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation
  • Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
  • Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
  • Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
  • Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts* [*Acknowledging that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change.] 
  • Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
  • Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
  • Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
  • Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

Holy cow! That’s a lot of “sustainability”! (14 uses of the word and its variants in 17 bullet points.) What does “sustainability” mean?  (We will come back to that.)

These SDGs aren’t just intended for others − as a signatory to the Agenda, the United States is supposed to implement them, too. So, who is taking us on this “collective journey” to “[t]ransform[] our [w]orld”?

As always, follow the money − and learn the backstory. In Part Two, we will meet the NGOs devoted to implementing the SDGs in the United States.