An Australian sports commentator in this the land of sport recently headlined reflections on ‘the winning mentality’: ‘There’s only two types of culture: There’s either a good or a bad one’. He is right about that keyword culture mattering; but on less sure ground in saying it is either black or white. In the messy world of life, there are many shades of grey. Not only that: things can be both black and white at the same time.  

Between sheer puzzlement, ‘fake news’, the dominant narrative of daily drama shaped bydominating media, and for now the C-19 pandemic, what happens to the traditional wisdom, common sense, and decency of ordinary people, as the still greater ecological crisis rolls on? What role for citizens’ applied learning?  

One solution to the puzzles of being and living in strange and fast-changing times is for educators to treat education as existing only in institutions for education, not in the wider,more complicated ‘real world’ outside the Education sector: ‘there be dragons, not really our business as educators’. This is a death sentence for ALE.