Today thousands of students across the country are receiving their A-Level results, and we couldn't be more proud of them. But, while our students are succeeding and putting their all into their education, the national curriculum isn't working as hard and is instead doing our students an injustice by omitting climate and nature education.
Today, I, like many other students around the country, am receiving my long-awaited A level results - marking the formal end of my 14-year-long school career. At Teach the Future we offer our heartfelt congratulations to everyone else receiving results today - we hope they are what you were hoping for, but if not, don’t worry - this is by no means the end of the line. Your results neither define you, nor do they solely determine the path down which the rest of your life will lead you.
What is, in fact, significantly more worrying, is that for all the students who today are leaving formal education for good, they are doing so in too many ways woefully unprepared for some of the dangers which lie ahead. I am lucky enough to have found my passion and knowledge around the climate and biodiversity crises elsewhere, but for so many others, our education system, as far as these are concerned, has failed us. While the system is not fundamentally without merit, it does seem incredible that two of the biggest threats to the future of humanity have somehow managed to go so shockingly unseen, and unheard of, throughout much of the school curriculum. In fact, depending on which A levels you took, it may well be that you have spent the last two years without any mention of the climate in an academic setting whatsoever.
For one of the most interdisciplinary and intersectional issues of our time, it is scary to think that so many students are going into the world of work blissfully ignorant (through no fault of their own) of the role that they can, and indeed must play in tackling these inescapable crises which only universal and far-reaching action will truly begin to solve.
Instead, we know that we can empower young people to feel equipped to tackle these crises, by ensuring that climate and ecological education is integrated across all school subjects. For example, in English, we need to see more fiction being examined from an ecological perspective, allowing students to discover the ways in which our relationship with nature shapes our cultural identity. In History, we need to examine some of the roots of the interconnected systems of injustice that perpetrate into our modern society. Or in Maths, we need to see mathematical concepts studied in relation to pertinent real-world scenarios such as the climate.
Our education around the climate and biodiversity shouldn’t just be limited to geography and the sciences, where even the little time we do spend on such topics is dominated by fact-orientated rote learning, with little room for insightful and meaningful discussion about the wider implications, and potential solutions. By integrating it throughout syllabuses we can ensure that no matter students’ individual interests and aspirations, by the time they leave school, they feel prepared to deal with the effects of a crisis that will impact us all.
And so, to all those leaving formal education for good today, we are sorry for your unpreparedness to deal with climate change, for the lack of support around your eco-anxiety, and for the little more than lip service that has been paid to your climate education. And yet despite everything, we hope above all that you won’t feel discouraged from fighting for the climate and nature, because despite our woeful lack of preparedness, the truth is that we need you. We need every one of us to be able to make a difference, no matter how and in what capacity.
We at Teach the Future will keep fighting for climate education in schools, but for those of us leaving, it seems now that our climate education is within our own hands, and within those of other communities and collectives that can support us in our journey. And though it shouldn’t have to just be this way, and we hope it won’t be for much longer, for now, we’re here for the challenge. May our lives ahead be filled not with despair and sorrow, but with hope, harmony, and real change for the better.
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Image provided by Hackney Council - Results Day 2023 - CC BY-NC 2.0