Stefan Bengtsson – författare

The 21st century looks quite different in reality to the predictions made by science fiction writers. Instead of a world dominated by flying cars and androids, we have found ourselves living in the wake of a global pandemic, experiencing an increasing frequency of natural disasters, battling political turmoil and global refugee crises, all set against the backdrop of the climate emergency and the mass extinction of species, including, eventually, our own. Meanwhile, we send off our kids to school to prepare them for a future that we as grown-ups increasingly come to fear. In this setting, what is the role of education at the potential end of the world? What societal as well as personal role does education play when our hopes for the future may need to be drastically readjusted?Education at the End of Time addresses these questions and explores the role of education in current society not in a limited sense of formal schooling, but rather in terms of what it means to live and engage with a world that is at the brink of collapse. Yet, it falls not into fatalism, but to account for a journey that leads to a (re)discovery of the world beyond the modern notion of development and personal realization. It offers an a journey to open up new perspectives for how to think of education as a way out of a path set towards the end of the world.

The 21st century looks quite different in reality to the predictions made by science fiction writers. Instead of a world dominated by flying cars and androids, we have found ourselves living in the wake of a global pandemic, experiencing an increasing frequency of natural disasters, battling political turmoil and global refugee crises, all set against the backdrop of the climate emergency and the mass extinction of species, including, eventually, our own. Meanwhile, we send off our kids to school to prepare them for a future that we as grown-ups increasingly come to fear. In this setting, what is the role of education at the potential end of the world? What societal as well as personal role does education play when our hopes for the future may need to be drastically readjusted?Education at the End of Time addresses these questions and explores the role of education in current society not in a limited sense of formal schooling, but rather in terms of what it means to live and engage with a world that is at the brink of collapse. Yet, it falls not into fatalism, but to account for a journey that leads to a (re)discovery of the world beyond the modern notion of development and personal realization. It offers an a journey to open up new perspectives for how to think of education as a way out of a path set towards the end of the world.

The 21st century looks quite different in reality to the predictions made by science fiction writers. Instead of a world dominated by flying cars and androids, we have found ourselves living in the wake of a global pandemic, experiencing an increasing frequency of natural disasters, battling political turmoil and global refugee crises, all set against the backdrop of the climate emergency and the mass extinction of species, including, eventually, our own. Meanwhile, we send off our kids to school to prepare them for a future that we as grown-ups increasingly come to fear. In this setting, what is the role of education at the potential end of the world? What societal as well as personal role does education play when our hopes for the future may need to be drastically readjusted?Education at the End of Time addresses these questions and explores the role of education in current society not in a limited sense of formal schooling, but rather in terms of what it means to live and engage with a world that is at the brink of collapse. Yet, it falls not into fatalism, but to account for a journey that leads to a (re)discovery of the world beyond the modern notion of development and personal realization. It offers an a journey to open up new perspectives for how to think of education as a way out of a path set towards the end of the world.

Dark pedagogy explores how different perspectives can be incorporated into a darker understanding of environmental and sustainability education. Drawing on the work of the classic horror author H.P. Lovecraft and new materialist insights of speculative realism, the authors link Lovecraft’s ‘tales of the horrible’ to the current spectres of environmental degradation, climate change, and pollution. In doing so, they draw parallels between how humans have always related to the ‘horrible’ things that are scaled beyond our understanding and how education can respond to an era of climate catastrophe in the age of the Anthropocene. A new and darker understanding of environmental and sustainability education is thus developed: using the tripartite reaction pattern of denial, insanity and death to frame the narrative, the book subsequently examines the specific challenges of potentials of developing education and pedagogy for an age of mass extinction. This unflinching book will appeal to students and scholars of dark pedagogies as well as those interested in environment and sustainability education.

Dark pedagogy explores how different perspectives can be incorporated into a darker understanding of environmental and sustainability education. Drawing on the work of the classic horror author H.P. Lovecraft and new materialist insights of speculative realism, the authors link Lovecraft’s ‘tales of the horrible’ to the current spectres of environmental degradation, climate change, and pollution. In doing so, they draw parallels between how humans have always related to the ‘horrible’ things that are scaled beyond our understanding and how education can respond to an era of climate catastrophe in the age of the Anthropocene. A new and darker understanding of environmental and sustainability education is thus developed: using the tripartite reaction pattern of denial, insanity and death to frame the narrative, the book subsequently examines the specific challenges of potentials of developing education and pedagogy for an age of mass extinction. This unflinching book will appeal to students and scholars of dark pedagogies as well as those interested in environment and sustainability education.