Education as Climate Resistance and Decolonization

Sor Juana's entire life embodied education as resistance—securing knowledge despite systematic exclusion, using intellectual authority to challenge patriarchy and religious dogma. Education systems today often replicate colonial logic: teaching extraction as progress, indigenous knowledge as superstition, nature as resource rather than kin. Climate decolonization requires transforming curricula to teach climate science alongside indigenous ecological knowledge, recognizing extractivism's colonial roots, and questioning who benefits from current systems. Students must learn how their schools, universities, and corporations invest in fossil fuels. Education becomes resistance when it develops critical consciousness about systemic injustice, not mere technical skills for market integration. Sor Juana's model means education centers agency: helping students understand they can challenge narratives, build alternatives, and direct knowledge toward liberation. Decolonial climate education teaches that different worlds are possible—economies not dependent on extraction, relationships with land based on reciprocity rather than exploitation, technologies serving collective flourishing. Education becomes the intellectual foundation for transformative climate justice.