{"id":7650,"date":"2020-02-26T07:10:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-26T07:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7650"},"modified":"2020-02-26T07:10:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T07:10:00","slug":"off-to-parliament-with-modest-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2020\/02\/26\/off-to-parliament-with-modest-expectations\/","title":{"rendered":"Off to parliament with modest expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I'm going to the House of Commons today to the reception organised by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthefuture.uk\"><strong>Teach the Future<\/strong><\/a>. \u00a0I'm representing <strong>NAEE<\/strong> which is a strong supporter of young people's efforts to bring about the sort of curriculum change that represents an entitlement to learn about the climate and ecological crises we face,\u00a0and what we can do about these. \u00a0I'm also lending my own personal moral support to what these splendid young people are doing. \u00a0See the BBC's recent\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/education-51492942\">feature<\/a> on them.<\/p>\n<p>Teach the Future says that a\u00a0core curriculum in English schools should deal with:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>What is the climate emergency?<\/li>\n<li>What are the ecological challenges?<\/li>\n<li>What are the socio-economic implications of dealing with 1 and 2?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>What they are asking for is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>an independent review of how the education system is preparing young people for the future<\/li>\n<li>changes to teaching standards and a new professional qualification for teachers<\/li>\n<li>funding for youth-led climate social action in every school, college and university (because we need action now, and we learn when we lead) and<\/li>\n<li>funding for net-zero educational buildings as a national infrastructure priority<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Given the problems that we face and our lack of policies to deal with them, these seem reasonable asks.<\/p>\n<p>I doubt that the government will agree to much of this. \u00a0Its position was put well by the DfE secretary of state at\u00a0the annual ASCL conference in April 2019. \u00a0Then, Damian Hinds urged children to stop walking out on strikes and instead learn how they can play an active role in saving the environment. \u00a0He said:<\/p>\n<article>\n<div class=\"articleBodyText section\">\n<div class=\"article-body-text component \">\n<div class=\"component-content\">\n<p><em>\u201cI want children in school, and I want children learning to be the engineers, the climate scientists, the geographers of the future. And you\u2019ve got a much better chance of that being in school than not being in school. \u00a0I would also say to those children, it is great that they take an interest in this topic, which is one of the biggest topics facing us as a country and as a world. \u00a0But they can actually take some pride in what this country has been doing. \u00a0When you talk to people in other governments around the world, they do talk about what this country has done, and the leadership role that we have taken on climate change. \u00a0But there\u2019s more that we need to do, clearly there is more that as a community we need to do. \u00a0So yes in that respect, yes I\u2019m delighted those children are taking a keen interest. \u00a0But I would rather they were in school.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Hinds was sacked in July. \u00a0Speaking in September on Radio 4\u2019s <i>Today<\/i>, Nick Gibb MP (the surviving\u00a0No 2 in the DfE) reconfirmed all this, saying that although the government shared young people\u2019s concern about climate change, ...<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>We don\u2019t think it should be at the expense of a child\u2019s education because what we want is for the next generation to be as well educated as possible to tackle these kinds of problem, and you don\u2019t do that by missing out on an education<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He added that even missing one day of school could affect examination results.<\/p>\n<p>Gibb and others continually say that the national curriculum provides a solid base for learning about the climate crisis and this message is being repeated by Conservative MPs in their replies to young (and not so young) people's letters to them. \u00a0The NAEE <a href=\"http:\/\/naee.org.uk\/dfe-in-denial\/\">blog<\/a> has a good example of this, and the admirable\u00a0Zamzam Ibrahim, the President of NUS and SoS_UK has written a strong rebuttal. \u00a0Her full text is on the Teach the Future <a href=\"https:\/\/www.teachthefuture.uk\/blog\">blog<\/a>. \u00a0She ends this by writing:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\"<em>We really want to support the Government to reform the education system around the climate emergency and ecological crisis, and to make the education system a core pillar of their climate change plans in the run up to COP26. We are doing this so we can ensure our generation does a better job of managing the planet the current lot have done to date. Reforming our education system is our best bet to securing our future<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<div id=\"advert_tmg_nat_story_bottom\" class=\"js-advert advert is-loaded\">So, where are we? \u00a0Well, up to now, the government has maintained this line that it's doing enough in curriculum terms, and I doubt that it will change much. \u00a0Moreover, government thinks it has\u00a0done enough in another sense as well. \u00a0As I may have said before, whilst educators might really want to believe their rhetoric that it\u2019s education in general (and environmental education in particular) that will save the world, government doesn\u2019t believe a word of it. \u00a0It thinks that this will be done by government, treaties, business, technology, innovation, enterprise, agencies, think tanks, trade, aid, etc where there are no children or teachers in sight.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"js-advert advert is-loaded\">It\u2019s because of this that it\u2019s happy with a pared-down curriculum offering and is unlikely be listening anytime soon or doing anything serious about it, despite the rising clamour of voices and the sea rising higher.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I'm going to the House of Commons today to the reception organised by Teach the Future. \u00a0I'm representing NAEE which is a strong supporter of young people's efforts to bring about the sort of curriculum change that represents an entitlement...<\/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-7650","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\/7650","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=7650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}