Cutting and pasting essays from the internet is a wholly rational response to an education system that is now an indoctrination system. The word ‘education’ has its origins in the root word ‘educare’ – meaning to ‘draw out and extend’. Modern education no longer does this. It imposes a curriculum on students that has its basis in making us look economically superior to the Germans. The purposes for modern mainstream education are built around economic objectives and are not about the development of human beings as individuals, their potential, values and identity in a changing world. Real education starts where you are – it is grounded in real, personal and lived experience. Real education gives you the tools to reflect on your own experience and make your own sense of it. It helps you to adapt to a new reality in the face of changing circumstances.

In reality I view my values as a green person as relatively meaningless in the scheme of things. I know that at a global level for everyone of me, a person who makes careful choices about what they consume and tries to limit consumption, there are probably 100,000 people who don’t, many of them because they are simply unable to have this wealth of choice. I know that even if every person in the UK became carbon neutral overnight, it would take China just 83 days to make up the difference in global pollution terms.

When you look around, it seems that ‘green’ is just another colour of consumer capitalism. Often it is the more expensive option in a choice to buy goods. Somewhere along the line corporate consumerism has already hi-jacked many of the real intentions beyond being ‘green’. Surely recycle, reduce, repair and re-use are the essence of the green message?

The first section from 'Report on Employment and Housing Prospects in Lostwithiel'. Written for Lostwithiel town Forum in October 2003. This report puts Lostwithiel, an ancient capital of Cornwall, UK in a global, national, regional and context in ‘sustainable economics’. It presents existing plans and information about the economic life of the town. It indicates areas for development in local economic affairs. It identifies grant, loan, education and information services in Cornwall, for stimulating small enterprise locally.

Eco-linguistics meets biodiversity in my language school in the ancient Cornish capital of Lostwithiel.

I am a Cornish person with a life-long love of Cornwall and a deep concern for green issues. My business involves offering a year-round combination of residential and non-residential language courses. I also provide organic vegan and vegetarian Bed and Breakfast.