Teaching Climate Change: Creating a Vision for the Future
By Stephen Scoffham
Climate change affects us all, but especially young children who have their lives stretching out before them. It is part of a web of complex inter-related environmental problems confronting humanity, any one of which has the potential to cause devastating consequences.
Climate change is unlike other problems in that it is particularly hard to see the links between cause and effect. Pollution that was emitted in one place in the past can linger in the atmosphere for many decades, affecting people elsewhere in the world far into the future. There is also a psychological dimension. Evolution has equipped us to deal with immediate and tangible threats but has left us vulnerable to dangers that are delayed and distributed. Climate change is such a pervasive and bewildering problem that it is easy to feel overwhelmed by it. It raises questions about power relations, intergenerational justice, and the responsibilities one group of people has to another. The poor and disadvantaged are particularly vulnerable because they do not have the capacity to cope with significant disruption. Our institutional structures are singularly badly placed to deal with such issues. In these circumstances, socially constructed silence becomes a convenient response.
But silence is not an option. We know from multiple scientific studies that the decisions we make in the next few decades are liable to have implications for thousands of years to come. Although it is difficult to be certain, there is every indication that we are living at a pivotal moment in human history when the choices and good judgement have never been more important. How can we best respond, individually, nationally, and internationally to climate change and other environmental challenges? And what do we need to do to steer towards a safe place where humanity has the best chance of flourishing within planetary limits?
There is no single answer, but it is widely acknowledged that education has a significant part to play in reframing economic, social, and cultural values and in helping to fashion more sustainable ways of living. This is not just the opinion of educational experts. It was affirmed, for example, by UNESCO in the Berlin Declaration on Education for Sustainable Development (2021) which unequivocally states that ‘education is a powerful enabler of positive mindsets’ that enables learners to develop both the ‘cognitive and non-cognitive skills’ to confront current challenges. All areas of the curriculum will need to be harnessed in this endeavour. The importance of new narratives, the value of the wisdom embodied in traditional belief systems and deep questions about meaning and purpose of life are also coming to the fore. At the same time, a respect for nature, and a commitment to human rights, democracy, and international understanding are seen as fundamental.
This is a time of great peril and great opportunities, there are literally hundreds of groups and organisations in the UK and other countries that are dedicated to promoting sustainability education. The pedagogies and practices to support sustainability awareness are widely established and respected in schools. Forest schools have shown the value of first-hand outdoor experience in nature and have many advocates. Regenerative and transformative learning are ideas that are gaining traction. And a book like Teaching Climate Change and Sustainability in the Primary Curriculum adds further weight to the argument for educational reform. Assembling the collective experiences and wisdom of a range of well-respected practitioners and teacher educators, it focuses is on the primary years – the time when the life message which children will take with them into adulthood is so often formed. With so many of the key pieces in place there is potential for transformative change.
Climate change isn’t simply a problem waiting for a solution or a technical fix. Rather, as climate scientist Mike Hulme (2009) points out, it’s an environmental, cultural and political phenomenon which is reshaping the way we think about ourselves, our societies and our relationship with the natural world. We now know all too clearly that the notions of conquest, exploitation, and progress which underpinned the fossil fuel age cannot be sustained. Finding a new direction – devising a new story of what it means to live well - is the challenge of our age. There is an urgent need to empower young people so they can play their part in shaping the future. At the moment we can only glimpse the possibilities that lie ahead but if we want to create a positive future, we have to imagine it first. One of the key tasks of the progressive educator, Paulo Freire (1994:3) reminds us, is ‘to unveil opportunities for hope, whatever the obstacles might be’. We can all play a part in this process, however big or small our role might be.
References
Freire, P. (1994) A Pedagogy of Hope, London: Continuum.
Hulme, M. (2009) Why We Disagree About Climate Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
UNESCO (2021) Berlin Declaration on Education for Sustainable Development available at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000381229
Book Details
Teaching Climate Change and Sustainability in the Primary Curriculum
Karin Doull, Susan Ogier
December 2023
ISBN: 99781529668766
About the Author
