Educating for a Sustainable Future

     I enjoyed reading Jaimie Cloud's chapter, Educating for a Sustainable Future. I feel like schools need to integrate more information on how to maintain the earth and keep the world a healthy place to live. Not only do we need to have a deeper understanding of "greening," but we also need to strive to provide a better future for ourselves and future generations. We can always improve and that is something I would like to instill in the minds of our youth.
     It was intriguing to read what the different schools had implemented to encourage the strength of intellect and self-directed learning. I hope to encourage and to see this integrated into the curriculum at my district. I agree with Cloud when she states, "As educators and students who want to contribute to a healthy and sustainable future, we will envision, design, and assess with the desired future in mind (pg 184). We need to focus on solving multiple current problems and prevent new problems to develop. I concur with Cloud that we need students to become more connected to the world and the places they live.    
      One sentence which stood out to me on page 169 was, "Roper studies and Gallup polls indicate that as many as 70 percent of school-age youth feel hopeless about the future and disempowered in their daily lives (Wheeler & Bijur, 2000) . Cloud discussed how this is not new data and the information has been publicized for decades (pg. 169). I am curious how they collected this data and accumulated these results? Were students given surveys? I would have to argue that I do not feel that 70 percent of students are hopeless about their future! I wonder what age group they are referring too? I do think that education needs to be modernized to meet society's always changing demands, but it is saddening to me to think that percent of students are disempowered by their lives and the future.