On Monday, 15th April, Esha Marwaha will hand in her petition to urge education secretary, Michael Gove, to keep the climate change debate on the curriculum. The 15-year-old geography student, and 28,000 others are demanding he scraps his plans to remove climate change from geography lessons. Let's see if it can reach 30,000 before the petition is handed over.
A few days ago I spoke to a friend to see what her take on Michael Gove’s decision to eliminate climate change from the Geography curriculum was. Upon discussing, she came out with: ‘ozone layer’, ‘polar bears’ and ‘don’t judge me, I don’t take Geography’.
Three quarters of secondary students don’t take Geography at GCSE. Removing a vital part of the syllabus for under 14s removes any chance they have of being inspired, empowered and interested in making a change. Not to mention, merely understanding an issue so important to the success of our future. Under Gove’s proposition, three quarters of students will be giving answers such as the ones listed above. Do we really want the Michael Goves and David Camerons of the future to be confusing the depletion of the ozone with climate change? (Here’s a geography refresher).
You might think all school subjects teach us truths in the way that Geography does, but only Geography allows us to evaluate issues in an economic, social, political and environmental way. Gove thinks it’s important to tell young people what climate change is, but not tell us how it can impact us or how to tackle it. Are people really going to understand climate change? Essentially, Michael Gove is dumbing down the generation of tomorrow. The very generation that will be in his position in 10 years time. Our government wants a prosperous future, so surely we want an education in the issues affecting our future. Burying climate change education in different areas of the science curriculum, however, hinders the progress we want to make.
We deserve to be educated as, in the words of Mr Cameron, "education doesn’t just give people the tools to make a good living, it gives them the character to live a good life, to be good citizens." This surely means educating a generation to be able to make their own informed decisions and take responsibility for their actions.
Including climate change education in the syllabus doesn’t force anyone to believe it; instead it lets them see and decide for themselves. We should be informed so that we’re able to make our own judgement on any current topic, including climate change. Is this really going to happen if three in four people aren’t provided with the opportunity to understand the various complexities of climate change in society?
