{"id":7511,"date":"2019-07-05T07:20:16","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T07:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7511"},"modified":"2019-07-05T07:20:16","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T07:20:16","slug":"changing-the-debate-schools-climate-conference-inputs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2019\/07\/05\/changing-the-debate-schools-climate-conference-inputs\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing the debate: schools climate conference inputs"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0school climate conference<\/a> on Wednesday, which was\u00a0organised by the\u00a0Green Schools Project<\/a>, School 21<\/a>, and WE<\/a>, was designed \"to provide rigorous knowledge, skills and motivation to allow young people to change the debate in their schools and local communities<\/em>\".<\/p>\n

So how did they do?<\/p>\n

Pretty well, I think \u2013 and judging by the enthusiasm of the students (aged 10 to 17) attending, very well.<\/p>\n

What follows is about the first part of the morning.<\/p>\n

We gathered appropriately enough in a Chemistry lecture theatre in UCL. \u00a0There was an astonishingly out-of-date periodic table on the wall, c. 1965. \u00a0Those arriving on time could watch\u00a0Greta Thunberg via one of her TED X talks. \u00a0Compelling, of course, but she's too clear-cut for my money. \u00a0\"There are no grey areas<\/em>\" is one of her favourite memes. \u00a0But it's not true. \u00a0Whilst the case for action is clear, what<\/em> to do for the best, and how<\/em> most appropriately to spend limited resources are not; grey areas aplenty here. \u00a0Greta added: \"We have the facts and solutions; all we need to do is to implement these<\/em>.\" \u00a0Well, only up to a point. \u00a0Call me old fashioned, but where there is uncertainty, I really think we should admit it and try to set out its parameters.<\/p>\n

Greta was followed by a no-grey areas cartoon from the Centre for a New American Dream<\/em>. \u00a0It had a slick slogan: \"The GOOD life need not be a GOODS life\" and was followed by a few simplistic generalisations (including, oddly, about the French). \u00a0The problem here is not so much that these issues are not important to air \u2013 they are \u2013 but that the medium and timing doesn't allow for nuanced exploration. \u00a0And that, of course, can be a general problem with one-off events such as this conference where the trade-off is in-depth exploration against wide surface coverage.<\/p>\n

After a commendably brief and clear welcome and introduction, we began with 2 brief presentations and a rambling one.<\/p>\n

The first was by Richard Dunne, headteacher of Ashley Primary School, who talked lucidly about his school's work where the 7 principles of Harmony are at its core. \u00a0Convincing stuff in a curriculum framing sense, but as Paul Vare and I noted in our last book, Harmony (especially as espoused by the Prince of Wales) is not how the natural world really works \u2013 but that argument's for another day.<\/p>\n

Richard was followed by a bloke from UEA (Rupert Read) who leapt onto the demonstration bench to shock us out of our complacency. \u00a0I was relieved he didn't take his clothes off. \u00a0Rupert is something of a Greta groupie and an XR member who could recently be found on Waterloo Bridge disrupting traffic. \u00a0His key message for the young people gathered was that their leaders \/ parents \/ teachers \/ et al. (everybody except XR, that is) are failing them. \u00a0\"It's worse than you think\", he said. \u00a0 \"Have you a chance of a normal life, like your parents?\", he added. \u00a0\"Will there be enough food?\" \u00a0 A Malthusian, I thought. \u00a0I felt like ending it all there and then, but the youth audience was made of stronger stuff. \u00a0You need REAL HOPE he said \u2013 that is hope and action. \u00a0Well, amen to that, brother. \u00a0\"Which rules will you break?\", he said, adding that this was not an injunction to break the law. \u00a0He then leapt off the bench. \u00a0It was probably the most exciting thing ever to have happened in that lecture theatre.<\/p>\n

I'll not say much about what Malini Mehra, the CEO of Global International Secretariat said because I lost the will to take notes after one too many anecdotes (she mentioned Mother Teresa a lot), and then I must have nodded off. \u00a0I did stir myself, however, when she asked the audience how many of them were involved in school energy use monitoring. \u00a0 Astonishingly, no hands went up. \u00a0No hands at all. \u00a0*****! \u00a0 Eventually, she ended with: Learn \u2013 Talk \u2013 Act which seems a decent mantra provided we can all agree on what<\/em>\u00a0 it is we have to do.<\/p>\n

After that \u2013 the audience had listened quietly for an hour \u2013 we turned to something completely different: workshops focusing on communication and on preparing for action. \u00a0More on all that later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0school climate conference on Wednesday, which was\u00a0organised by the\u00a0Green Schools Project, School 21, and WE, was designed \"to provide rigorous knowledge, skills and motivation to allow young people to change the debate in their schools and local communities\". So how...<\/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-7511","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\/7511","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=7511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}