5. Is Climate Change Changing Classrooms?

10-05-2023 • 37 minutos

Cognitive Science, Climate Science, and the Apocalypse

Our question for this series, Is Climate Change Changing Classrooms? puts the problem and the issue of improving classrooms directly in conversation with the climate crisis. These two crises can actually, when put together, inform the solutions to each other. They are both about humanity’s existential future. If we don't educate our young people, they will not have the skills, the agency and the confidence to transform unsustainable systems to move humanity forward. And if we don't address our climate crisis there's not going to be a healthy or livable environment for humans to continue. So these two issues are really interconnected with the future of humanity.

There are an abundance of cognitive scientists, education researchers and practitioners, who have much to tell us about what works for kids in schools. They tell us things such as, students need to be involved in learning that is active, that's of importance to them, and that's of importance to their teachers. And yet, teachers are too often handed mandated curriculum that is peddled by publishers to district and state administrators. The curriculum has little meaning because it is decontextualized from children's lives, interests and communities.

There are an abundance of climate scientists with consensus on what we need to do in order to address our climate crisis. But just as in education, that knowledge continues largely unheeded. We continue with systemic dysfunctions in education and, really in all aspects of society, that reinforce a status quo that, if not addressed, will spell certain disaster for humanity.

Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation

Regeneration, Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation is a book by Paul Hawken with many resources from people who are taking positive action on the climate crisis. Dr. Jewry Rugeley is the lead author of the sixth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2020 Dr. Jewry delivered findings that if we bring carbon dioxide emissions down to net zero, global warming will level off and the climate will stabilize within a decade or two. There will be very little to no additional warming. The current best estimate is zero.

For decades, scientists shared the mistaken idea that it would take a long, long time for the climate to re regulate itself. But now scientists tell us nature will regenerate itself very quickly if human beings take the necessary actions needed.

Classrooms and Climate Change are Connected!

Paul Hawken connects classrooms to the climate in the opening chapter, saying our planet and youth are telling us the same story. ‘Vital connections have been severed between human beings and nature, within nature itself and between people, religions, governments and commerce. This disconnection is the origin of the climate crisis. It is the very root. And it is where we would discover solutions and actions that can engage all people regardless of income, race, gender, or belief. And so he goes on to say that what we need to do is to engage the majority of humanity.’

Paul Hawken tells us that we are either stealing the future or healing the future, depending on whether or not we take action. Regeneration is not only about bringing the world back to life, it is about bringing each of us back to life. It has meaning and scope. It expresses faith and kindness. It involves imagination and creativity. This is a watershed moment in history. The heating planet is our commons, and it holds us all to address and reverse the climate crisis. We have created an astonishing moment of truth. The climate crisis is not a science problem. It is a human problem.

To Address and Reverse the Climate Crisis Requires Connection and Reciprocity

What if the K 12 curriculum for all young people engaged them in a new relationship of kinship with the natural world, and provided the historical, social, economic and environmental context to understand where we are on our planet, what the potential adaptations and solutions are, and that this is a collective effort for their generation to lead? Imagine young people, in their writing classes imagining what the solutions for the future would look like. Imagine, right from kindergarten, children researching and expressing their ideas about how to protect animals in their watershed, or improve the quality of our water and assure access to clean water for everyone.

This is a curricular throughline that can connect to issues and understanding of the natural world and human impact on healthy communities in their own neighborhoods and lives. Questions of interest and importance in children's local communities have the potential to actually engage them, offer them a sense of agency, and help them to see the careers of interest and importance that they can grow into.

A K-12 Curriculum That Can Restore Our Environment and Hope to the Future

A curriculum that involves children with the beauty, the miracle, and the regenerative capacity of the natural world, is one where skills, knowledge and techniques in the physical and earth sciences, historical and social sciences, math, technology, engineering, music, dance drama and the visual, literary and media arts can be taught, explored, developed and deepened. But this is not just the work of educators or scientists. Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation will necessarily need to be an international and intergenerational cross-sector, cross-industry effort involving artists, health workers, food providers, urban planners, engineers -all of us. It will require a coming-together for common cause. Designed with respect for the knowledge and interests of students, teachers and their communities, it can be an exciting, motivating and hopeful challenge!

Lois Hetland

Wow, I thought so many things. I thought about the video on Restoring the Kinship Worldview that Mark Borchelt sent us from Four Arrows talking about the indigenous perspective, and being relational. I thought about the Earth Shot Awards organized by Princess Kate and Prince William which I'm going to attend here in Boston. 15 winners will get $1.2 million each to advance their idea around the categories of building a waste free world, reviving our oceans, cleaning our air, fixing our climate. The whole idea is that the Earth Shot is like this idea of curing cancer, but it's based on the moonshot. President Kennedy said we can go to the moon and he set out to organize our resources to do it in 10 years. This is also organized to be done by 2030, which is just so incredible.

Louise Music

And there's an essential role for everyone. I think that if we were teaching our children through the social, economic and environmental issues of our time, we could also eliminate racism in one generation, and possibly poverty, and even war. We have the opportunity to make a huge pivot, because our children are such natural learners. Margaret Wheatley tells us that we don't need to teach people to collaborate. Human beings naturally want to collaborate. But we live in a system where our schools teach through, and about, individual achievement, That's not naturally how children come to school. They come with a love to work together and hear each other's ideas. They just don't get enough opportunities to cultivate collaborative practices, and they soon learn that connecting to the work of others is cheating, and they are conditioned to ‘race to the top.’

Intergenerational Tensions and Connections

Heather Francis

I think sometimes, intergenerationally, it doesn't feel like collaboration. I remember being in school, learning about climate change, learning about my environment, and being told about the crisis. I felt like older people are telling me and other young people, ‘Here is your problem to solve. We're not going to be here for it.’ That doesn't feel like collaboration. It feels like passing down the problem, and not thinking about future generations. But I love the title of that book, because it gives me hope. It says in one generation! So rather than passing down to younger people, it is collaborations, both directions, right? It's elders concerned for those who are following them. And then as young people and people younger than me, we can have that same concern for those who will follow us. I do think sometimes it doesn't feel that way because it feels so scary. And I know I have wondered, if I take action, is everybody else gonna do it? Because I feel it's only going to make an impact if everybody does so.

Lois Hetland

You know, Heather, I think I told you guys that I've started re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Nozick. This is a book that was written in 1974 and I must have read it in 1975, or something like that. It was really close to the time when Rachel Carson had written Silent Spring. It was the first Earth Day, and I was young, and very idealistic, and trying to save the world. My whole generation had experienced the assassinations of the Kennedys, and Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, and it was just such a mess. There was the Vietnam War and we were so angry. And we felt we couldn’t trust anybody over 30! And there was this huge motivation to fix the climate and to stop polluting, and to stop the wars and stop the industrial, military, industrial complex. And this is what we grew up on, in addition to having to line up and go out for nuclear bomb drills in first grade. Line up in the hall and sit down and put our heads down and put our arms over our heads. And I remember thinking, I don't think they've thought this through really well, because my neck is exposed, and I think the glass could cut it, when I didn't really need to worry about that because we were all going to be vaporized. Our sense of being desperate and needing to do something was so huge. And Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a book that so many people in my generation read. Millions and millions and millions of copies sold all over the world. Going back to it and reading the naive idealism of that time, and that generation, gives me pause. Contrasting that with the idea that we're the generation that passed down the climate problem, and that the millennials, and the generation Z, and the A's are all thinking of us as the super bad guys who messed it all up. I really think the disconnect between those two truths is just so hard. It's really hard.

Louise Music

Peter Senge is a systems thinking guy from MIT who wrote The Fifth Discipline. He talks about the creative tension between our current reality and our vision. He says that we are often not honest about our current reality, and how bad it really is. And then we're not as ambitious as we need to be about the vision of where we really want to go. I think that's the question we need to be posing to our children and schools. What should the world really look like? We shouldn’t resign ourselves to people who are in poverty forever, and an elite group of billionaires forever. We need the boldness of our real vision, regardless of how idealistic or naive it might seem. In Paul Hawken’s book, Heather, he's got a whole section on agency. He talks about how natural it is to worry that it matters little if individuals are taking action, if others are not. But he says, from the planet's point of view, there is no difference between a climate denier and someone who understands the problem, but does nothing. The number one cause of human change is when people around us change. It is about somebody else making change, but it is also about each and every one of us. It's a both/and.

Solutions for the Future

Cally Flox

Sometimes, in our powerlessness, we feel we are being asked to do things that aren't super effective. And so we do things just to do things. So I want to think of how and when we are being effective. One of the places where I found great hope was in the idea that if we take the steps to bring the carbon emissions down to net zero, we can end global warming in a decade or two! A decade is measurable. And that feels doable. One of my best friends is a water engineer, and she's been very clear. The planet is resilient. Humans are the ones who can't adapt this fast. Katharine Hayhoe was a keynote speaker at our teacher’s conference this week. She said that if all the people did what they could do, it would only solve 25% of the problem. The rest of the 75% is up to the actions of businesses and corporations and policymakers. We have to change in effective, reasonable ways. We have to have support from those operating at systemic levels. She said one of the most important things we have to do is have this conversation. If we don't all go home from her talk that day, and communicate the problem and solutions with everybody around us, nothing's going to change.

How do we talk to some of the biggest violators of the pollution regulations? I think one of the problems is, it's not personal. The big polluters and extractors go for money, and they don't care if they hurt humanity. Was anyone trying to hurt each of us as individuals? No, they don't know us. And there's an ability to make invisible all of the individuals on the planet and just focus on the profitt. I really like the ideas that have been shared so far about it all comes down to being connected to the whole world, connected to each other, connected to the earth. That we survive together, or not at all. And we can only do it together.

Lois Hetland

I’m thinking of the book by Kim Stanley Robinson that Louise and I just read, called The Ministry for the Future. It starts in 2023 with a heatwave in India that kills 20 million people. And that catalyzes a whole bunch of actions but it had to get bad enough. This is what physical therapists always say, that people don't do their exercises because there is not enough pain. If you have enough pain, then you do your exercises. I think this event, this fictional event of 20 million people dying in India, was enough pain. And it catalyzed all sorts of responses, including the development of the ministry of the future by the United Nations. For the next 40 years there are so many efforts going on, not unlike the Earth Shot lifting up projects and giving them a big chunk of money to move their climate positive idea into reality. The Ministry for the Future was doing things like that, too.

Cally Flox

Lois was talking about how many people are making a difference. And there are so many teachers making a difference. And so many places in education where great learning is happening. I'm most excited about talking with teachers who have survived some of these climate weird experiences and what they've done with their students. I look forward to hearing more about Lois's mural project where students are participating in educating themselves and their community about the tide rising right there in their own neighborhood and what the can do to mitigate the dangers, or adapt..

Heather Francis

I'm excited because in the introduction we talked about curriculum that comes from publishers that is not connected to children's lives at all. But experiencing extreme weather is part of the textbook of life, that everyone is experiencing. It's not abstract. It's a real thing. And I like thinking about these life experiences as the curriculum in our schools.

Lois Hetland

Paul Hetland was the one who was sharing with us, in our Series 1 podcasts, that it is more important to talk about the climate crisis than it is to actually do things on the person by person level. He talked about Al Gore getting criticized for flying all over the world, to talk about his film The Inconvenient Truth. And his personal airline travel was fairly inconsequential. It was just a way to make him out to be not as important as he really is. What's important is that he got people educated and talking about this topic. Paul was saying something that Louise was saying to Heather, which is, that people who acknowledge that the human caused heating that's going on in the world, are as likely to be flying all over the place on airplanes, and not recycling. In other words, you don't have to be a climate denier to be doing damage to the world. And we're all probably doing a lot of damage to the world. And so the idea of talking about it, and keeping bringing the conversation forward, is just so important.