For decades, concerns such as enrolment, infrastructure, teacher training and learning outcomes have dominated our educational debate. These remain essential priorities, but they concern the machinery of education rather than its purpose. Before deciding how to improve education, we should first ask what education is ultimately meant to achieve.

Modern education has given humanity extraordinary scientific knowledge, technological innovation and longer, healthier lives. Yet it has also produced an uncomfortable paradox. Though we have made remarkable strides in progress, the Earth is becoming increasingly less liveable not only for human beings but for countless other species. Canadian education philosopher Edmund O'Sullivan argues that contemporary education suffers from a "loss of the cosmological sense" – a diminished understanding of humanity's place within the larger community of life. In his view, today's environmental crisis is also an educational crisis because schools shape........

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