{"id":7846,"date":"2021-01-19T17:27:01","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T17:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7846"},"modified":"2021-01-19T17:27:01","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T17:27:01","slug":"learning-about-the-climate-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2021\/01\/19\/learning-about-the-climate-the-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning about the climate: the Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

I gave a talk the other day to an attentive and appreciative group of PGCE geography students. \u00a0I did this from home, of course, using a rather slick platform that I never quite learned the name of.<\/p>\n

Although the talk was about climate, environment and the curriculum and what we might now be helping young people learn, I took a 60 year perspective: from Rachel Carson to Greta Thunberg \u2013 and emphasised the similarities and differences of these two influential but controversial icons. \u00a0This long view took in environmental education's modern beginnings in the 1960s, its 1970s golden age, the disaster in the 1980s wrought by the English national curriculum, its 1990's sidelining as a cross-curricular theme, the false promise of the sustainable schools initiative in the 2000s, the neglect of the coalition years in the 2010s, and recent phenomena such as the Friday climate strikes and student activism through Teach the Future. \u00a0I set all this against the backcloth of all those conferences, world summits and international agreements, culminating in Paris and the SDGs. \u00a0I then explored the question of what students might be learning about the climate and climate change, using the ideas developed working with NAEE.<\/p>\n

When I'd done all that, I then set out what I thought about a number of issues to do with climate, environment and the curriculum. \u00a0I did this so that the students could see my thinking and assumptions about the issues. \u00a0I stressed that they did not have to accept what I thought, but that there was an imperative on them to have their own views on these topics. \u00a0I confined myself to 5 topics which were: The Earth; Young people; Schools; Curriculum organisation; Curriculum progression. \u00a0This is what I said about the Earth:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2013 \u00a0<\/strong>The Earth is not dying<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>We are not doomed<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>But the environmental problems we face are considerable and unprecedented<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>International agreement is necessary but difficult<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>Adaptation and mitigation will be complex, expensive and controversial<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>Massive socio-economic shifts are likely to be necessary, and not everyone will be happy about these<\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>Hope and determination need to triumph over gloom and anxiety.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It's not much of a coverage: only a sketch of a sketch, perhaps, but it was enough for one P.pt slide. \u00a0I did not go into detail about any of this, just letting the students read the slide and ask questions if they wanted to \u2013 which they did. \u00a0Perhaps I should have mentioned the disagreements over timescales for adaptation (though I did this in another part of the talk), or the need for careful reform of our economic system (though the students did). \u00a0Next time, perhaps.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I gave a talk the other day to an attentive and appreciative group of PGCE geography students. \u00a0I did this from home, of course, using a rather slick platform that I never quite learned the name of. Although the talk...<\/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":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-talks-and-presentations"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7846","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=7846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}