Before logging off to enjoy Christmas, we thought we’d use this last opportunity to talk through our Christmas list! Santa, you better be listening!! You may have seen this post on our Instagram page but what do we mean by these? Let’s break it down!
Before logging off to enjoy Christmas, we thought we’d use this last opportunity to talk through our Christmas list! Santa, you better be listening!! You may have seen this post on our Instagram page but what do we mean by these? Let’s break it down!
To quote Teach the Future’s asks, ‘Our education buildings play an essential role in how and what we learn. By retrofitting them to net-zero emissions by 2030, we can create green jobs across the country and inspire students to live sustainably.’ When learning about how to combat the climate crisis, the buildings we're learning in should reflect this and an example of a world that lives with climate at the forefront.
The climate crisis is one which is already impacting our world and the lives of people across the globe for the worse and it will continue to do so. Our education, however, is still not treating it like the crisis it is. Teach the Future’s primary ask is for climate education to be embedded across the UK curriculum. To refer to our vision, ‘Students need to be taught about the climate emergency and ecological crisis: how they are caused, what we can do to mitigate them and what our future lives and jobs are going to look like due to them.’ It's simple really, we need to Teach the Future!
A Teach the Future survey reported that 70% of teachers feel they have not been properly trained to teach about climate change and that 7 in 10 UK teachers say they have not received adequate training to educate their students on climate change. It’s simple, teachers are our keys to education, therefore they need to be equipped with the training to teach us, and that includes the knowledge on how to teach us about the climate crisis. Educators need to be trained in how to teach about these difficult topics in a way that empowers students, and they need funding and resources to do this.
77% of students say that thinking about climate change makes them anxious and in the UK, as many as 1 in 6 young people will experience an anxiety condition according to research by the charity Global Action Plan in 2020. Young people nowadays can’t escape the facts and the figures surrounding climate change and it's undenyable that climate anxiety is on the rise. As Clover Hogan, 21 year old climate activist and researcher on eco-anxiety puts it, we need to be taught to ‘step up rather than shut down….convert this fear into action and know what to do when faced by this fear.’
"You may have heard the term “Climate Justice” being thrown around before in many scenarios. You may have even heard the phrase “Climate Justice = Social Justice”, but what does “Climate Justice” really mean anyway? Climate Justice is a term used to frame the climate crisis as not just an environmental issue but as an ethical and political issue. It means relating the causes and effects of the climate crisis to ideas of social justices." You can’t look at climate change through a singular lens, it affects everyone and everything in some way or another and disproportionately affects some more than others. Climate Justice encompasses the need to account for everyone. You can read more on our blog ‘What is Climate Justice and Why is it so Important?’. Climate Justice is a bigger conversation than a singular bullet point and there are countless resources online delving into this deeper. But for me, Climate Justice underpins everything we do in the climate movement.
We don’t think we’re asking for too much, do you? These are things we all need and deserve the right to. We’d love to have your support to make these things happen moving forward into 2022. Follow our campaign on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Sign up to our mailing list and find out how you can take action with us. We’ll also be holding onboarding sessions in the new year, recruiting more young people to help make our campaign the best it can be. Stay tuned!
Wishing you a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year,
The Team at Teach the Future x
Cover Image: Dejan Kijevčanin / Getty Images