Th e Anthropocene concept appears particularly useful also for educational purposes, since it uses

metaphors, integrates disciplinary knowledge, promotes integrative thinking, and focuses on the
long-term perspective and with it our responsibility for the future(bidart,T,L:2013)

The world in which we live is fragile; a small layer of organismic activity covers the planet like a
microbial film on top of a large boulder. Nonetheless, humans treat the Earth as if anthropogenic
impacts on this delicate biological layer may be absorbed by unfailing natural buffers. Yet,
convergent and overwhelming evidence from all over the world underlines that mankind has already
changed and continues changing the face of our planet. Among the many transformations humans
imposed on our planet, some of the most severe appear to be (1) the addition of more than 550
billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere which are the main drivers of global climate change
and ocean acidification (Gray 2007; Ciasi and Sabine 2013), (2) the alteration of the global nitrogen
cycle by the use of artificial fertilizers (Canfield et al. 2010), (3) the routing of more than one third of
global primary production to human consumption(C.C. Voigt and T. Kingston)

. There are however many additional physical and chemical changes incurred via the process of
urbanisation (McDonnell and Pickett 1990), such as increased pollution, eutrophication, increased
waste generation, altered hydrology (Vitousek et al. 1997; Grimm et al. 2008), increased urban noise
(e.g. Slabbekoorn and Ripmeester 2008) and artificial light (Longcore and Rich 2004). Urban areas
can provide a more thermally stable environment via the urban heat island effect

scuss suggestions for the beginning of the Anthropocene, including the

impact of fire, pre-industrial farming, sociometabolism, the meeting of
Old and New World human populations, industrial technologies, and the
atomic age. They conclude that there is currently not enough evidence to
formally ratify a new Anthropocene epoch, but that “More widespread
recognition that human actions are driving far-reaching changes to the
life-supporting infrastructure of Earth may well have increasing
philosophical, social, economic and political implications over the coming
decades” Annette Goughhttps:
//iiraorg.com/2020/11/16/education-in-the-anthropocene/
hile most agree that we do need new ways of thinking our collective
existence, the “Anthropocene” is seen by many as the wrong descriptor
because it surreptitiously purveys a human supremacy complex and the
assertion of anthropocentrism 

Changing roles for education

Education has a role to socialise people to live in societies, and educational

institutions (as well as families, peers, the media, employers etc.) socialise
individuals by passing on the social and cultural values and knowledge of
the group, as a form of social reproduction. In many ways, society “wants
to keep and continue itself by reproducing as it is” (Kurt, 2015, p. 224).
From the time of the industrial revolution and the introduction of free,
compulsory and non-religious education for all children, through acts of
parliament in the 1870s in many countries (including England, Canada,
Germany and Australia – but 1841 in France, and not until the early 1920s
in the United States of America and 1986 in China), education has had a
function of social reproduction. 

Educational institutions achieve social reproduction through controlling

the ways people access economic and cultural resources and power:
deciding “whose knowledge is ‘official’ and about who has the right to
decide both what is to be taught and how teaching and learning are to be
evaluated”

Some of the roots of social reconstructionism can be traced to John

Dewey in Democracy and Education where he described education as
“that reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the
meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of
subsequent experience” (1916, p. 76). However, it was in the mid
twentieth century with the growth of critical theory that social
reconstructionism really connected with educators  and acknowledged
the oppression of women in the dominant forms of education:
Many educators have enthusiastically embraced the notion of the
Anthropocene. For example, Jane Gilbert (2016, p. 188) sees the
Anthropocene as possibly “the ‘crisis to end all crises’, the catalyst to
provoke real change” in science education, and Reinhold Leinfelder
(2013, p. 26) asserts, “The Anthropocene concept appears particularly
useful also for educational purposes, since it uses metaphors, integrates
disciplinary knowledge, promotes integrative thinking, and focuses on the
long-term perspective and with it our responsibility for the future.”
Others, however, argue that we need to interrogate the contested nature
of the term itself and its political and cultural implications, “rather than
unwaveringly accepting the ‘age of humans’” (Lloro-Bidart, 2015, p.132).

Bats in the Anthropocene: Conservation of Bats in a Changing World. Springer Cham Heidelberg New
York Dordrecht London © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016.