Sustainability in Schools: Will it be 4 year olds who save the world?
The world is not left to us by our parents,
It is lent to us by our children.
— African proverb
Let’s start at the very beginning…. a very good place to start….
When dropping my 4-year-old daughter at school the other day, her teacher grabbed me and said she had heard I was an expert in sustainability, and they were about to start a Unit of Enquiry based on the environment. Did I think I could come and talk to the class and share some of my knowledge?
This triggered two thoughts….1) I am in no way nor ever claimed to be an expert in Sustainability (or anything really), and I was not sure whether to be pleased or concerned that I was somehow being considered so….and 2) yes of course I would be happy to talk to the class, but where would I even start??? How do you broach the topic of the climate crisis with a class of 4/5 year olds?
But when thinking about fighting climate change, introducing our kids to the issues we are up against certainly seems like a good place to start!
“I believe the children are our future”
While the late, great Whitney Houston probably didn’t have the environment in mind when she sang these immortal words, they certainly do ring true in this context. Afterall, it is our kids who are going to be the ones growing up to be the consumers, decision-makers and social players of the future. We don’t even have to wait to see it — the recent School Strikes for Climate, which was held in over 200 countries, have shown what a force children and youth can be.
I think that everyone would agree that a better educated population can only be a good thing, but perhaps most people would overlook the direct relationship between education and environmental sustainability. However, education has long been recognised as an essential contributor to the Sustainability agenda. For example, the second Millennium Development Goal aimed to achieve universal Primary education by 2015, while the Dakar Framework for Action on Education for All addressed gender disparity in primary and secondary education. And more recently, Goal 4 within the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is centred on this very link. The text of Goal 4 reads “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all” and includes a set of associated targets [1].
So how are the two related? I am glad you asked….
Because of the climate crisis, our children are going to confronted with challenges we are only in the process of defining — they are going to be asked to manage issues as wider ranging as extreme weather patterns, biodiversity loss and environmental damage, food and water shortages, social injustice and ill health due to climate change. One of the key tasks of education is to equip kids with the knowledge, skills, attitude and values to be able to address these, changing the current ways that society behaves and thinks [2]. Introducing environmental education at an early level needs to be central to this. And it is important that they are taught that sustainability needs to be embedded into everything both at school and at home, not just a special topic that the kids do at school for a couple of weeks and then move on.
Too many bubbles!!!
Last night, the world practically ended for my 4-year-old when I ran her a bath and there were too many bubbles. Yes, too many bubbles. I am talking apocalyptic level meltdown…the type where there is not one rational thought going through that gorgeous but very angry, curly little head.
It is this immaturity in emotions that leads some to argue that children are too young to be exposed to such serious topics, that doing so will only create anxiety in minds that are still learning to cope with the world around them. However, I would argue that it is the fact that they are still forming their ideas and how they see the world around us is EXACTLY why we need to be introducing these ideas. Tackling the impending climate situation is going to take a new mindset, new approaches, new attitudes. So, when better to start the conversation that when they are still in the process of forming their own ways of thinking.
There are direct benefits to environmental education too — a recent study in Australia showed how children between 3 and 5 were taught how to sort, reduce and recycle waste, which in turn was carried over into the children’s homes, when the newly aware children reminded their families about the importance of sorting, impacting the recycling practices of the whole family[3].
Another study (also in Australia) built children’s knowledge on water advocacy, teaching them to report dripping taps, half-flush toilets and taking shorter showers. In turn, they were found to influence the practices of adults around them, changing practices at home and school [5].
So in my mind, it is all pointing towards the same answer — sustainability has to be central to education at all levels of the curriculum so our kids and our society will be equipped to handle the challenges ahead. But like all things that are worth doing, this is perhaps easy to say, and harder to do….
Where to start, where to start….
Following the Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, the United Nations published an outcome document, and within this stated:
“We strongly encourage educational institutions to consider adopting good practices in sustainability management on their campuses and in their communities with the active participation of, inter alia, students, teachers and local partners, and teaching sustainable development as an integrated component across disciplines”.[6]
Easy. Schools just need to teach sustainability, practise sustainability, advocate for sustainability, BE SUSTAINABLE.
Not so easy.
For some, this is one of those ‘to make this true, we need to change the way we approach everything’. And this is not so easy. Even when they have a supportive community around them, it will take time and effort and resources, all things the school system tends to be short on. And sometimes they are going to have parents / board members / stakeholders which are actively opposed to making these changes. So how can they start?
This is where Zero Waste Schools programme can come in. It is run by an environmental charity I am involved with here in Singapore called Zero Waste SG (ZW), who are focused on driving to a zero-waste society through advocacy and education within the community. See their (newly updated and very slick) website here — http://www.zerowastesg.com/. The Schools programme aims to work with primary schools to develop a zero-waste culture through a whole school approach. They work with the teachers and management to train them about how to build Sustainability into everyday teaching, plus explicit teaching sessions with students around waste reduction, recycling, green consumerism and building their own empowerment and accountability.
I have been involved with ZW for about a year now, joining their board after doing some mentoring work with them. I have been looking for something to get my teeth into, and my increased exposure to the sustainability challenges because of my master’s has made me realise that this could be a great programme to give some attention to. The increased complexity due to the Covid pandemic means that we have not been able to get the traction we were hoping for this year, but Singapore is opening back up so it is the perfect time to re-energise the programme.
So I have my challenge — how can we refresh this programme so that we can hit the ground running once we can get back into schools? What would schools find most useful? How do you get the messaging right for young kids? Where can get the right funding — how do we pitch to corporates to help sponsor it? How do we scale?
How do we give 4 year olds the chance to save the world?
References:
[1] https://sdgs.un.org/topics/education
[2] Davis, Julie (1998), “Young Children, Environmental Education, and the Future”, Early Childhood Education Journal, Vol. 26, №2, 1998: 117–123. Retrieved 01/11/2020 from file:///C:/Users/606069487/Downloads/Davis1998_Article_YoungChildrenEnvironmentalEduc.pdf
[5] Miller, Melinda G., Julie M. Davis, Wendy Boyd and Susan Danby (2014). “Learning about and Taking Action for the Environment: Experiences of Children and Teachers Who Participated in a Preschool Water Education.” Children, Youth and Environments 24(3): 43–57. Retrieved 31/10/2020 from: http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=chilyoutenvi.
