The School Climate Strikes started last August when Greta Thunberg, a 16 year old from Sweden went on strike in protest against the lack of action on Climate Change. Since then Greta has spoken at international conferences (spending 16 hours travelling by train to get to the World Economic Forum in Davos while world leaders and celebrities hired private jets.) Thousands of school pupils and students across the world have since then joined in the Climate Strikes.
Today thousands of pupils and students in at least 60 towns and cities across the UK have joined in the first official Youth Strike 4 Climate in the country.
It's obviously great that the young people are showing such commitment to the issue, but some people seem to wonder what effect this may have on their continuing education. UK Prime Minister Theresa May for example has said the children on school strike are “wasting lesson time”. Well it seems to me that taking part in the Climate Strike is good for education, participants are learning about:
climate science
team building, event organisation and leadership
decision making
assessing and acting on risks
taking responsibility for themselves and for future generations
public speaking
and probably more topics too, making the strikes an excellent field study exercise.
The Climate Strikes are supported by many school teachers, academics, environmentalists and Christiana Figueres, former UN Climate Chief.
If you're a teacher or a parent of school age children what are your thoughts on the Climate Strikes?
Suspect one or two of them were on a jolly but I support them!
ReplyDeleteI completely support these climate change strikes and was disappointed by Teresa May's patronising response. These students are apparently far more aware than she is that, if something drastic doesn't change soon, they might not actually have a future worth studying for.
ReplyDeleteIt seems a shame they were doing it in school-time …
ReplyDeleteAll the best Jan