Parents, crises and beyond. Towards school as a shared place and a more-than-human world

Abstract

This paper presents an attempt to describe parents’ activities, in which context it is puzzling that – on the basis of a negative assessment of the current reality (current crises, including the privatization of what is public) – parents seem to be searching intensively for new solutions that would make better not only the school but also the world it is a part of. Their focus, in this, is on the local dimension of activities that refer to sustainability and emphasize place. In this approach, place is a field of confrontation and constant becoming. Parental activities in one sustainable community school in Chicago is the point of departure to introduce a pedagogy of the vital place that pays specific attention to how the heritage of these places makes them (partially) resistant to capitalist capture, and somewhat ready to take on the challenges of the crisis in which we live on the planet today. The reflection presented in this article is guided by the assumption that, in these times, when the survival of humankind is at stake, we desperately need a more-than-human format of world.

Keywords

• parents, crises, sustainable community school, more-than-human world, pedagogy of a vital place