JRA Williams
“Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning. The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.” António Guterres, UN Secretary General, 27 July 2023.
The Climate Action Network1 (CAN) is an astonishing global alliance of over 1,900 organisations, dedicated to ambitious and radical measures to confront the climate crisis. CAN UK is about to start a new group to work on action for climate empowerment and inclusion. This will develop positions to facilitate education, training, public awareness, public participation, public access to information, and international cooperation on climate issues. The aim is to add urgency to the recognition at the highest levels of the United Nations (UN) that achieving internationally agreed goals of mitigating, adapting and responding to climate breakdown requires more action.
Why hasn’t education adapted?
Education does not have a good record of adapting to changing circumstances. In 1899, John Dewey declared it was ‘inconceivable’ that the industrial revolution should not transform education. Yet the inconceivable occurred, and 120 years later the system of education remains largely unaffected by the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. It has not adapted significantly to the global changes that have characterised the information revolution of the twentieth century. Schooling became the norm in all industrialised, colonialised, and later ‘developing’ societies. The model of classrooms with a teacher, display board, and pupils in rows facing them persists globally. The curricula have not changed much from class-bound, academic models. Control by societies’ elite is maintained by ensuring that academic criteria judge success or failure.
Whose interests are served by these pre-industrial revolution practices and methods in education? We can identify the power brokers of the twentieth century: initially European colonialists, and then the business and industrial corporations who are their post-war successors. The interests of both were to preserve a system which maintains enormous privilege and benefit for an elite, while sustaining and profiting from the masses as cheap labour and consumers. An education system which prioritised the academic, rather than creating a meaningful critique of the social order, was one which would receive and benefit from the decisive support of the most powerful.
This situation has continued well into the twenty-first century. Formal independence gave new nation states flags, armies, and legislature, but control over fundamental aspects of life such as food, energy, and finance mostly remained with the colonial masters and markets in the global North. Local elites are now managers of this neocolonialism, and education systems have remained static in the service of the status quo aligned with their interests. Now, with global heating and all the changes that it brings, there is an even more urgent need to adapt and transform education.
Schools are the problem
Education is rarely what happens in schools; they replicate established norms and instil discipline towards them. At best, schooling navigates individuals’ passage through cultural, societal and legal norms, but does not question them. It demands compliance, not creativity, problem solving and critical thinking. It is backward looking and not equipped, as Dewey notes, to adapt.
Detach education from institutional frameworks and it becomes dynamic and intrinsically adaptive. It responds to changes in the environment and in response to the moment-to-moment decisions that stem from and stimulate learning and participation. Its organisation is defined by a purpose of developing the critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity needed to adapt to the future.
If institutions are to be maintained, schools, for example, must follow internationally accepted agreements that children have the right to an education which develops their personality, respect for others’ rights, and the environment
As the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child outlines, education is directed towards the development of a child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, the natural environment, their parents, cultural identity, language and values, the national values of the country in which they are living and from which they may originate, and for civilisations different from their own.
What can we do?
Schooling often prevents the most valuable learning, but using inclusive values, improvement is possible. Inclusion in education is acting on an ongoing process of asking who is excluded from learning and participation, what are the barriers, and how can they be lowered. A powerful tool for developing this model in schools is the Index for Inclusion.3 It provides an accessible guide for whole-school development to take a school community through a rights- and values-based, inclusive process of change. It connects the curriculum to learners’ experience. It breaks down distinctions between practical, vocational, and academic education, and encourages local and global links to be made in all subject areas.
Ultimately, education happens anyway, anywhere, and continuously, especially outside school. EENET’s excellent home learning poster4 and activity guide5 – developed during the COVID-19 pandemic – shows how learning opportunities can be developed using family and neighbourhood resources in almost any context, for everyone. This illustrates true educational inclusion.
For people in the global South the most critical challenge is adapting to climate breakdown now and in the future. Education is vital for this, and inclusive values ensure that everybody, especially the most marginalised and vulnerable, are engaged in the learning as both informants and recipients. People taking part in describing and discussing their situation and exploring responses will ensure the richness and effectiveness of adaptation action.
Action for Climate Empowerment under the UN climate agreements makes climate action accessible to all. The Climate Action Network is open for new members to add to its formidable strength in promoting climate justice and ensure that all are fully included.
Change is upon us. We need to adapt, develop and use our unique capacities to think critically, problem solve and create, or we will perish.
[1] https://climatenetwork.org/
[2] https://index-for-inclusion.org/en/
[3] https://bit.ly/eer24-7
[4] https://bit.ly/eenethl4
[5] https://bit.ly/eenethl5
J.R.A Williams writes in a personal capacity. He is currently Senior Policy Advisor at Islamic Relief Worldwide and a long-time supporter, client, and consultant for EENET.