Subject:

Lifestyle Sustainability

[T21]   Hours: 125    ECTS: 5    Exam: in 2nd Yr 

Study modules in the 1st year (50 hours) and 2nd year (75 hours).

Why this subject is included in the curriculum

Through the contents and methods of this subject, you learn and train lifestyle attitudes and skills that will support and sustain you throughout life, both as an individual and on a collective level. As a teacher, these are important skills for you to pass on to the next generation.

In the modules, students will:

• do sports
• have a healthy lifestyle
• practice sustainability
• discuss quality of life and choose a lifestyle which is line with what is needed in the world today
• learn to be role models for their future students

More about the subject

Human beings can change their fortunes by taking charge of their own lives, solving problems, changing attitudes and building new habits. Your inherited genes influence your health and longevity. How you live your life influences health and longevity as much.

The same goes for your daily life and circumstances on a collective level, the material framework around work and life. You can, if you join forces with others, build a collective and modern way of life by own practical efforts and ingenuity, making it function as you want it to and becoming more and more self-sustainable, while also contributing to a better life for people in the area around you.

On a personal level, the purpose of this subject is to teach you how you can become fit and strong and live a healthy and long life. On a collective level, the purpose is to teach you how you can build a self-sustainable and well-functioning modern lifestyle together with others.

Lastly, it is to show you how people can protect themselves against the consequences of Global Warming and Climate Change.

The knowledge and skills you learn in this subject are important for any modern human being, but they are especially relevant for intellectuals, who on one hand have the responsibility of teaching young and grown-ups, and on the other hand have the possibility of teaching and mobilising people to improve their lives and welfare in the surrounding communities.

This subject is first and foremost a practical one, but it also involves background knowledge and studies. You learn from practicing a partly sustainable lifestyle throughout the three years of training at DNS. Partly comes in because mankind practically speaking is so far from living the sustainability we talk about, because mankind lacks many of the necessary tools to do so, and because mankind on a global community basis does not at all agree about the idea of a lifestyle sustainability.

You gain life skills from the practical and organisational work and efforts you do and from seeing and benefiting from the results and changes you bring about, and your experiences from the practice will form and influence your lifestyle attitudes and habits.

For DNS and for each of our students, lifestyle sustainability is about:

• Producing abundant amounts of organic food for the whole school with vegetables, fruits, eggs and meat
• Cooking and eating nutritious and tasty food
• Becoming and staying fit and strong through all kinds of fitness training and sports – organised in groups or clubs as well as on an individual basis
• Getting regular health checks by one of our own DNS Medics – a student or teacher in each team trained for the purpose
• Treating modern health problems like obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure through a changed lifestyle
• Learning about HIV/AIDS: the disease, prevention and treatment
• Keeping the buildings clean and nice
• Preventing illnesses and infections through good hygiene
• Securing plenty of clean drinking water
• Improving the building standards through own work
• Maintaining and beautifying the buildings
• Developing the park with more trees and flowers
• Keeping computers and other equipment working perfectly
• Maintaining and improving the infrastructure in and around our school compound
• Repairing and maintaining own cars and buses
• Setting and following rules for safety in traffic
• Running the economy with ingenuity, finding and creating funds for improvement
• Learning entrepreneurship to start new projects and productions
• Making our school Climate Compliant
• Experimenting to produce CO2 neutral energy
• Managing waste, water and sewage in safe, efficient and sustainable ways
• Developing a lifestyle in which the collective element dominates as the foundation for social behaviour Developing a lifestyle in which teachers and students locally and nationally take sustainability issues to heart

Develop an attitude

As you can see from the above, Lifestyle Sustainability is about attitudes, about consciously setting high standards and then about being busy, doing what you have planned. During it all, you reap the results, personally as well as collectively. In this way, you learn how to take charge of your own life and circumstances, you learn to sustain yourself, and you find out in practice how you can organise and establish a modern life wherever you are, which supports and promotes your work and what you want to obtain in life.

Through your ability to do many different kinds of practical work and solve all kinds of tasks, you learn to deal with all sorts of material matters and questions, and you learn from experience that you can do almost anything. Moreover, you also learn how you can protect yourself and others against Global Warming and Climate Change, and how you can deliver a neutral or positive CO2 footprint to the Earth. The knowledge and skills of this subject are learned and practiced throughout the whole training.

As a result, much more personal fitness training and sports of all kinds are enjoyed and trained, and much more practical work is done. On top of this, you bring all your experiences to others, teaching them how they in turn can improve their lives. If you go through all the periods looking for lifestyle sustainable elements, you will find plenty everywhere.

Travelling, investigating, becoming a contributor to our website, farming in good company, doing community work in good company, getting to know life in our modern world as you never did before, all have challenges to both lifestyle and sustainability

Some of you might even end up preferring a sustainable lifestyle because you have lived it, because you understand it and because you try to stay as one with your own and the coming generation. Forming yourself allows for formation work within your circle and beyond.

We better take care of each other. Who else is supposed to do it?