Can we teach sustainability without teaching “hands-on” skills?

The Chronicle of Higher Education “The Future of American Colleges May Lie, Literally, in Students’ Hands”

Two compelling rationales emerge for teaching our sustainability-oriented students how make things:

1. One of the biggest challenges to sustainability is understanding the connection between production and consumption. Modern industry, and the economic system that underlies it, serve to distance the consumer from the producer. In so abstracting the origin of our products, we also distance ourselves from their impacts on the welfare of other humans and the ecosystems on which we depend. As the article suggests, “self-reliance is crucial to emancipation from mindless consumerism”.
2. Sustainable solutions require practical, innovative solutions. While engineers and designers (whose interaction with materials and production is built into their training) may be at the center of invention, those who wish to work with these inventors need to have a practical understanding of production.

It is also really interesting to me that this book makes the survivalist connection, acknowledging that those of us who think deeply about sustainability also contemplate ‘back up plans’ should civilization fail to deal with it present unsustainability. Something is in the air, even if only a few of us are breathing that air.