So asks NUS vice president Dom Anderson in a compelling blog post on Monday. You should read it all, but here’s a flavour:
Why is sustainability not seen as a class issue? It will be the housing estates in our inner cities where the energy prices will kill grandparents, it’ll be in the classrooms of struggling urban schools where young people are made to feel that they can’t affect any kind of meaningful environmental change and it will ultimately be the poorest who end up starving because the rich corporations have destroyed our delicate eco-systems.
This is why NUS’ work is so important. Studies suggest that students form behaviours while at college or university that stay with them for the rest of their lives, from the beer we drink to the music we listen to. I believe it is our education system’s duty to embed learners and students with knowledge of sustainability. Why should we allow our future business, political and educational leaders to leave tertiary education as the problem and not the solution to environmental sustainability? It should be part of our national curriculum, and not just something that is spoken about in our nicer primary schools.
Dom has hit the button in many respects (though my choice of beer – thank goodness – has changed since I was at university). I'm not sure, though, that all socially-deprived children go to schools that dismiss sustainability. It might even be the reverse of this, with teachers rightly seeing sustainability as a focus which leads to interest, motivation and achievement. Sadly, my grounds for saying this are only anecdotal, although the research evidence for the power of sustainability to motivate and educate is substantial.
Responses
I have always wondered why, instead of subsidising home owners (who likely already have the wherewithal to buy solar panels) to save money on their electricity bills through micro-generation projects, do we not install solar panels on council houses; alleviating fuel poverty and fuel shortages simultaneously!?
A bit off topic, I know, but it has always bothered me.