Words, as Wolfgang Sachs has demonstrated in The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge and Power (1982), take on different meanings depending upon the assumptions of the cultural group using them. From the perspective of Third World cultures, words that in the West are associated with  Progress and development represent the language of colonization. When these same words are understood in terms of the assumptions and vital interests of Third World cultures, they take on an entirely different meaning.
The meaning of words used by educational reformers who have as their goals universal Emancipation, a linear form of progress, and the continuation of an anthropocentric understanding of human/Nature relationship is, from an ecojustice and revitalization of the Commons perspective, part of the language that continues the Tradition of Western colonization.
An EcoJustice dictionary is intended to clarify how the words used by emancipatory educational theorists take on an entirely different meaning when used in a discourse that addresses the importance of conserving linguistic and Biodiversity, the commons as sites of resistance to the further spread of the West’s industrial Culture, and the need to introduce reforms in the universities and public schools that contribute to achieving ecojustice for the world’s diverse peoples.
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RD Glossary M- Mentoring
This intergenerationally connected relationship occurs in the arts, athletics, healing practices, crafts, place-based living--and even in community and environmentally destructive practices and relationships where profits are put ahead of what contributes to the well-being of the community; within the context of educating for ecojustice and the revitalization of the commons, mentoring is essential to passing on the skills necessary for building and maintaining the material culture, for developing personal artistic talents that represent alternatives to industrially produced entertainment, and for developing skills and the formation of character traits necessary for giving personal expression while at the same time renewing the worthwhile achievements of the past; mentoring also enables the older generation to feel that they are making a contribution to the quality of life of the younger generation; it is essentially a caring and non-monetized relationship.
RD Glossary by Run Digital
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