Please help us develop this page – always a work in progress! Ideas and feedback are welcome. Our Sentientism FaceBook group has a dedicated Sentientist Education chat that you’d be welcome to join too. Here’s a YouTube playlist of our education-focused Sentientism conversations.

What would a Sentientist education system look like – committed to “evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings”?

• It would be child centred – out of compassion for children as sentient beings (see UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools). All children would have rich educational opportunities (learning, developing skills, exploring, creating, understanding and caring for others, building community, being inspired, choosing their own worldviews) whereas today hundreds of millions of children don’t have the chance to go to school at all
• Naturalistic epistemology would be infused into all subjects (teach about good quality evidence & reasoning in science and humanities classes – don’t just assume or bypass it)
• Sentiocentric moral scope would be infused into all subjects (why just be human-centric – why not a sentiocentric history (or here), geography, economics, politics, arts?)
• Sentientism would be taught as a worldview alongside other worldviews (religious and not), whether in civics, philosophy or religions, values and worldviews subjects.

Resources

Sentientism Resources:

• Sentientism section in RE Today’s “Investigating Non-Religious Worldviews” (see pdf below)

• Teaching the Sentientism Worldview – workshop recording (video and audio). Follow Sentientism on Eventbrite for future free sessions
• VinE materials on Sentience and Sentientism (Secondary / senior school ages)
• Model Sentientist School Charter (not yet developed – input/ideas/drafts welcome!)
• Sentientism School Speakers (This RE Hubs directory is UK focused – look for “Sentientism” – but we’ll do Zoom talks anywhere in the world – just contact us at hello@sentientism.info)

Resources (school/university speakers, videos, teaching materials…) relating to sentiocentric compassion and its implications:

• Institute for Humane Education
• Veganism in Education (VinE)
• Vegan Society’s “Vegan Inclusive Education“
• The Open University’s Veganism Interactive online course
• Animal Aid’s Education Resources
• Animal Ethics and Sustainability Leadership at Huron University. The world’s first major in this space led by Dr. Kendra Coulter (see our conversation in Sentientism episode 178)
• New Roots Institute offers virtual and in-person lessons about the impacts of industrial animal agriculture across the USA at both high schools and colleges
• A Deeper Kindness – Animal Law Documentary Series – targeting secondary and post-secondary students. Free videos with accomanying eductator guides
• Stories We Live By – resources and a free online course in ecolinguistics. Studying and improving the stories that shape and are shaped by our beliefs and values
• ACTAsia’s Caring for Life education programme
• Mensch Tier’s Farmed Animal Ethics workshops (Germany)
• The ALICE Project (Animals, Climate and Civic Education) (Germany, France and Austria – EU funded) – including a podcast and a graphic novel
• Kind To Animals – resources and courses to help kids develop compassion, curiosity and critical thinking
• Animal Hero Kids – resources from a global educational charity empowering kids’ compassion
• Critical Animal Pedagogy and beyond – seeing all sentients as learners?

Resources (school speakers, videos, teaching materials…) relating to naturalistic epistemology:

• Institute for Humane Education – Solutionary thinking
• Humanists UK Education Resources
• National Secular Society‘s teacher resources on Exploring Secularism (UK)
• Philosophy for Children (P4C)
• Humanistic Life Studies (Germany) – activists are working to upgrade this towards Sentientist Life Studies
• UCL Research on encouraging epistemic literacy in religious (and worldviews) education

So far it’s rare for any single institution to address both “evidence and reason” and “compassion for all sentient beings” but the Institute for Humane Education is a wonderful exception. See my podcast conversations with Zoe Weil and Mary Pat Champeau. Look out for Zoe’s book “The Solutionary Way” too.

You may also find the Ethical Schools podcast and The RE Podcast (includes non-religious worldviews too – here’s Lou’s episode with me about Sentientism!) interesting listens as they often touch on related themes.

Actions students might want to consider:

• Asking their school or university to sign the Plant-Based Treaty (see their schools or college/university playbooks) or to become a Plant-Based School or Plant-Based University
• Transition their catering and other purchasing to be plant-based. See the work of Plant Based School Kitchens and their pilot project with The Our Lady of Sion School (UK). Also check out ProVeg’s School Plates Initiative and the Atlas Vegan Community School in Uganda
• Inviting The Growing Nature Academy team to organise a school visit to help students learn about growing their own plant foods
• Reviewing their school curriculum, policies and activities to reduce exclusionary ethics, including anthropocentrism (see Janae Dimick’s analysis of the representation of farmed animals as an example)
• Adapting their curriculum to incorporate Sentientism’s “evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings”.