Education for peace, education for sustainable development (ESD), Global Citizenship Education (GCED), Global Learning, Development Education and Awareness Raising (DEAR), Human Rights Education and other such ‘adjectival’ educations have existed for a while now. It is unfortunate that they are still at the fringes of curricula trying to make space for themselves in the already overburdened curricula, as regular schools have to devote time to the teaching of core subjects like Maths and Sciences. The UN Decade of ESD (2005-2014) marked a positive beginning in reorienting formal education towards transformation for sustainable development, but many ESD and GCED efforts to date remain isolated and marginalized. These efforts tend to focus on impacting stand-alone subjects, or promoting “add-on” activities—through a celebration of events such as Earth Day or non-systematic incorporation of project-based learning.

Until and unless these concepts are mainstreamed and infused in knowledge content of core subjects (through textbooks) and the core subjects become vehicles of peace, sustainable development and global citizenship, efforts towards achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, especially Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 4.7, would be weak. We call this infusion approach ‘embedding’.

Using this approach, the Embedding project aims to embed concepts of peace, sustainable in textbooks of core subjects especially Maths, Science, Languages, and Geography. Embedding in core subjects puts the values and principles of sustainable development at the heart of education and contribute to achieving education ‘for’ sustainable development. Embedding is not about inserting new thematic content into an already overcrowded curriculum. Instead, it is about reorienting core subjects to serve a purpose that is more socially and globally relevant, empowering young people to address local and global challenges with a shared respect for human dignity.