‘We should all in part be naturalists’: critical environmental philosophy and environmental education policy

Abstract In response to a worsening of the climate and ecological crisis, the UK Department for Education (DfE) recently published a policy strategy which intends to facilitate transformational behavioural change via reforms which inculcate in pupils a lasting and action-orientated ‘awe and wonder’ about the natural world. Its approach attempts to link increased sustainability and climate literacy with transformational change via satisfaction of two aspects of effective environmental education: the ontological aspect, by which pupils better grasp ‘their place in nature’; and the affective aspect, by which pupils are motivated to protect and value nature. Here, with the help of critical environmental philosophers, I argue that the strategy inadvertently reveals a lacuna in environmental education policy, whereby relatively uncritical commitment to a strong ontological naturalism unduly limits critical reflection upon the more problematic affect- and action-guiding assumptions underlying the entities that mainstream science reveals. I end by suggesting some modest remedial measures and highlighting some broader questions that the foregoing raises about what environmental education ought to be.