Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Having failed to win over adults, climate activists appear to be stepping up efforts to impress their viewpoint on children entrusted to their care, with strategies ranging from climate themed early learning stories to activism workshops for teenagers.
Get them young;
Why Children’s Stories Are a Powerful Tool to Fight Climate Change
MAREK OZIEWICZ 6 MIN READJAN 14, 2022
The power of children’s stories resides largely in its audience: in how open young people are to new ideas. Their drive to experiment is familiar to any parent: Children invent new words, do things differently, and ask “why” about pretty much everything we adults take for granted.
For teachers, children’s noncompliant curiosity is at once a source of delight and frustration. We know this curiosity lies at the heart of learning, and we strive to keep it alive by pushing against educational systems built on factory-model standardization. And while some dismiss youth “rebelliousness” as a stage—something to grow out of—what if it is really a refusal to comply with the wrong ways of doing things that adults have acquiesced to?
In this time of climate change and biodiversity loss, children’s ability to imagine alternatives to the way things are may be the most powerful force for the socioeconomic transformation we need. It is childlike curiosity that allows youth climate activists like Xiuhtezcatl Martinez and Greta Thunberg to imagine that people like you and me, together, can change the system to work for the planet. It is childlike honesty that empowers young climate strikers to say, much like the child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” that adults are caught up in self-serving illusions about eternal growth in the market economy. And it really takes a childlike power to believe that a sustainable, equitable, and multi-species future is achievable even as corporations are fracking like there’s no tomorrow.
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Imagine that we teach climate literacy from kindergarten all the way up to high school and across all subject areas. Imagine we give our students story-rich examples to help them understand what is at stake and how they can be agents of change. Imagine we also empower them with vocabulary and concepts to articulate visions of sustainable, equitable futures. And imagine we give our teachers a resource where they can find books, films, apps, and other formats—including lesson plans—for teaching climate literacy effectively.
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We do this because we recognize that in our current socioeconomic system, any meaningful action on climate change is indeed a childish dream. But if this childishness—its audacity, directness, and hope—is the only way forward, addressing climate change is eminently a job for children’s stories.
Read more: https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2022/01/14/climate-change-childrens-stories
Teenage workshops to turn out more kids who think like Greta Thunberg;
Climate change: Inadequate governmental response is causing climate anxiety in young people
January 14, 2022 by World Economic Forum
This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum.
Author: Stefan Klebert, Chief Executive Officer, GEA
- More than half of young people worry about the future of the planet, according to a new survey.
- 75% described the future as “frightening”.
- Despite the lack of action from global governments, young people are taking action.
Governments around the world must protect the mental health of young people by taking action against climate change, a study from The Lancet Planetary Health has concluded.
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What are young people doing to help solve the crisis?
Regardless of the perceived government inaction, Melati Wijsen and her sister Isabel are training up a generation by giving them the tools to make a difference.
YOUTHTOPIA offers on-the-ground local workshops and training for young people who want to become “changemakers”. YOUTHTOPIA is the second project from the pair after they helped bring about a ban on single-use plastic bags six years ago in Bali – a movement called Bye Bye Plastic Bags.
Greta Thunberg and other young climate activists sat in front of the Swedish parliament every day for three weeks in August 2018 to protest the lack of action on climate change. As a result, she launched the Fridays for Future school climate strikes.
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Our kids are not “powerful tools” for others to use, to further a political agenda which parents have largely rejected.
” adults are caught up in
self-serving illusionsreasonable planningabouteternalfor modest growth in the market economy. And it really takes achildlikefree market to believe that a sustainable, equitable, and multi-species future is achievableeven asthanks to corporations who arefrackingstruggling to produce oil to meet our needs to keep us warm, well fed, and not be home bound in the dark.like there’s no tomorrow.”needed some editing :-]
And doctors are reporting that too many children are suffering all kinds of harmful psychological effects, leading to physical distress, from these strategies!
Those poor kids IMO are the broken units who don’t make it all the way through the education system climate propaganda pressure cooker. The stress is supposed to morph into climate activism zealotry, but some kids don’t make it through the final stage of the process.
“Acceptable losses”, Eric, in pursuit of the Cause.
When you have science curricula written by Leftist climate alarmists, and taught by teachers whose only knowledge of climate issues is what they get from those curricula, it’s a guarantee the kids will be fed a one-sided view of the whole business. Mind you, if the kids learn this stuff as well as the rest of their subjects, maybe there’s not so much to worry about, especially when they realize how many of their toys and creature comforts they’ll have to give up to save the planet.
“And while some dismiss youth “rebelliousness” as a stage—something to grow out of—what if it is really a refusal to comply with the wrong ways of doing things that adults have acquiesced to?”
It is neither. It is wrong to think this very natural tendency in child development is some kind of flaw. It is also silly thinking that the child is so analytical that he is trying to straighten out parental errors. Normal rebelliousness is a limited force for advancement of the human race, simply because it is a child beginning to think for himself, a transition from what is given to other possibilities.
It’s limited by the child having only a priori reasoning as a tool for his ideas because children don’t, at that stage, yet have experience (in French, this very word means experiment) to employ inductive reasoning.
The “childishness” and bull-headedness of activists ironically probably comes from not having escaped “the given” created by authority. They didn’t (couldn’t?) get to the next critical thinking stage. Poor Greta has a disorder that blocks her from critical thinking and abuse of this child by thoughtless opportunists underscores the terrible lengths these people are prepared to go to.
Their indoctrination ‘plan’ starts too early in child development. By the time the youngest gets to the rebellious phase, monotonous yammering about crisis climate for years has made it the status quo and a target for rebellion. Also, most parents are already in the bag it seems, doubly setting up the target.
“In this time of climate change and biodiversity loss..”
My pet peeve with not only “Climate” activists but supposed scientists as well (but I repeat myself) is they start their opinion piece with a false premise and then base the rest of the argument on that false assumption.
Need I point out, the Climate is always changing and the turnover in species is also constant through millennia? Sticking on the new woke word “diversity” is meaningless.
After decades of covert indoctrination, they’ve gotten far enough they think they can be blatant about it now.
1919 Oil discovery fabricated 1919 betz limits phyics law elimnated 59% of wind and tides infinate values values TO offset Einstines 1905 relativity that drafts oil and nuclear “HellS of ways to boil water.” And elect oil policy president’s.
Do Facts matter ?