A whole lot of folk have worked themselves up in a lather of indignation because a few thousand young people left their schools last Friday to protest about the lack of governmental action about climate change. \u00a0A few of the more insightful protesters also had schools' own curriculum conservatism and inaction in view as well.<\/p>\n
To the bureaucratic mind this protest is no different to bunking off (or whatever it's called where you live), or jetting off for a cheaper family holiday in the sun\/snow\/bush\/whatever, and this has resulted in a righteous demand for punishment \u2013 and some amazing stupid schools have even internally suspended the students involved thus ensuring that [i] they miss even more \"unmissable\" lessons, and [ii] \"hard-working teachers\" have to work even harder. \u00a0Beyond belief ...<\/p>\n
I note that there were some schools and teachers that encouraged (and\/or seemed to give permission for) students to take the day off. \u00a0But this was only because they approved of the subject of the protest. \u00a0When someone wants to go on, let's say a pro-Brexit or anti-immigration march, it will be a different matter. \u00a0Anyway, surely no self-respecting student would want a teacher's approval to protest.<\/p>\n
For me, criticising the lack of curriculum attention is more apt for a student that criticising the lack of climate policy, although both matter. \u00a0 The government clearly could do something about ensuring that the curriculum is brought up to date, but it doesn't and I have explored why I think that is elsewhere<\/a>. \u00a0And so could schools. \u00a0I wonder how many schools faced with this Friday absenteeism will decide to give serious attention to climate (and many other) issues within their own curriculum structures. \u00a0Not many, I guess. \u00a0Not for the first time I find myself regretting that the NUS doesn't operate in schools. \u00a0Now that would sort out complacent \/ unimaginative headteachers and governors.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, all power to the Friday protests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A whole lot of folk have worked themselves up in a lather of indignation because a few thousand young people left their schools last Friday to protest about the lack of governmental action about climate change. \u00a0A few of the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}