I've been reading NAEE's latest blog post from Richard Dunne leader of the Harmony Project. It's worth a read and contains this passage:
"... The climate emergency has come about from a complete lack of understanding of what we need to do and how we need to be to live sustainably. Yes, we need the practical elements of improving our buildings and introducing the climate emergency and sustainability into the curriculum, but I don’t think this is enough. We have to rethink how we educate and what we are educating for. This needs a much deeper conversation beyond the training of teachers and educators to provide a better education around the climate emergency, whilst acknowledging this is important. I think this should be included or we will not change the way we educate for a sustainable future we are still so far from achieving. ..."
My own view on this is that the DfE is never likely to do anything like Richard suggests. Certainly it seems that what the DfE is now doing through the development of its strategy is a very limited affair that is mainly focused on resources and a bit of training here and there; talk of curriculum change appears to be verboten. Who'd have thought it?
Because of this, it would seem that the only way progress will be made is through innovative action in schools themselves that then spreads through the system. The schools that do this will be those who understand the issues from bottom to top and whose leadership sees that it's the thing to do for the sake not only of their students, but also of us all.
Such schools already exist, and it would be good to see a database develop even though it might well be hard to agree on criteria for inclusion. But then the discussion of criteria would itself be part of the development process.
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