Eco-certified students? The governance of souls in Education for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Today is the term "Education for Sustainable Development" (ESD) tainted by with notions of the "exemplary life" and "desirable future". This practice is exercised in school all over the world. The aim with the paper is to unveil how teaching materials in ESD are governing students through different technologies of the self. The paper departs from the idea that discourses decide what is possible to think, say and do in a specific historical and cultural context. To understand how these discourses are internalised into peoples thinking, saying and doing we study a process of governmentality. This process must be understood on three levels: Political rationalities; Political programs; Technologies of the self.Our paper problematizes the concepts of "the good person" and "the exemplarily life". We are analysing three different types of teaching material often used in ESD. One criterion for the choice is that the material use science and mathematical calculations for the represen-tation of sustainable development, since we are interested in how these rationalities are used in the process of governmentality.The teaching material is analysed through discourse analysis.In the result can we show how diagrams and mathematical calculations used in the teaching material can be understood as governing technologies for four different political rationalities: 1) Individuals are free and obliged to make choices in the modern society; 2) Everyone is responsible for a common future; 3) Belief in scientific and technological solutions; 4) Idea of the progress. Calculations and Diagrams are instruments in governing the modern human being. These – scientific – representations of ideas of how society should be organ-ised, of how an expected future can be met and how individuals should act are governing our souls, how we want to be in order to be seen as good and "eco-certified" people.