Rethinking the school in the Anthropocene as an ecological and democratic third place

This paper examines education in the Anthropocene as a holistic education focusing on the emergence of viable social organizations in the Anthropocene compatible with the sustainability of human life in society. The school is therefore studied as a structural frame for global behavior development, habits of thinking and acting that structure our interactions with the common world. Regarding contemporary political hurdles challenging social transformations toward sustainable societies within democratic representative governance systems, we emphasize the role of participatory democracy as an essential element for enabling maintenance and care of our shared environment. Therefore, based on the work of John Dewey, we theorize school as the place of socialization that shapes the development of collective politico-ethical habits. We take community gardens as an example for the school form, as it allows students to emerge as an active democratic and ecological community around the care of the nature of the garden as a shared environment, within the human and non-human community of life.