From Ecopedagogy to Eco-Leninist Education

Taking as its point of departure, Ford’s major recent interventions in pedagogical theory, this paper seeks to (1) critique ecopedagogy as a degenerated offshoot of critical pedagogy, prone to its parent’s fundamental deviation from its revolutionary, Freirean origins; (2) move beyond the moment of critique to that of theoretical reconstruction, in the form of Eco-Leninist educational theory as class struggle in the realm of education in/for the Capitalocene. Recent scholarship has co-opted Lenin to the project of urgent, rapid, green transition, sometimes drawing on the model of war communism: drastic measures for environmentally catastrophic times. At same time, new adaptations and applications of Lenin have lent the Marxist canon a revived urgency in the period of ‘anthropogenic omnicide’. I turn these interventions to the cause of Eco-Leninist educational theory in pursuit of an organizational form that escapes ecopedagogy’s accommodation to capital.