"School strike for the climate": high school students shake up the agenda

"I'd like them to forget their personal interests, and take an interest in the climate": with this challenge to world leaders, at COP 24 in December 2018 and then at the Davos International Forum in January 2019 the young activist Greta Thunberg, has become the icon of a youth demanding a radical change in environmental policies.

Sylvain Wagnon, University of Montpellier

In Davos, Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish woman behind the school climate strikes, joins Swiss high school students. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP

In August 2018, this 16-year-old Swedish high school student began protesting in front of the Swedish parliament, and has been striking every Friday since to demand swift political action in the face of threats to the planet's equilibrium.

Through her individual commitment and her outspoken condemnation of adult inertia, she highlighted the clear-sightedness of the younger generation with regard to the risks of global warming. And it's no coincidence that her message had an immediate impact in Australia, a country already suffering the consequences of climate change.

Urgent action

Greta Thunberg's mobilization also inaugurated a very special and unprecedented form of action. This school strike is both a wake-up call on the urgency of climate action and a sign of the importance given to schools. Is it just a protest? The name chosen, "fridaysforfuture", seems more a call to awareness than a nihilistic act.

Nevertheless, Greta Thunberg points out, "Why should we study for a future that will soon no longer exist, when no one is doing anything to save it?" Knowledge is the future, but it's through action that we can save the planet.

An international phenomenon, "Youth For Climate " marches are becoming increasingly popular in Europe, from Scandinavia to Switzerland, via the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Great Britain. At the same time, schoolstrike4climate, the school strike movement, is relaying Greta Thunberg's call for a global school strike on March 15, 2019.

In France, climate marches are rendered inaudible by the gilets jaunes movement, which has monopolized public debate since November 2018. The French situation may even appear paradoxical between the gilets jaunes who seem to emphasize "the end of the month before the end of the world" and a youth who stress that their own future will only make sense if the planet still exists.

Beyond programs

These strikes call into question the educational institution on several levels. First and foremost, it's a mobilization of "young people" and adolescents, in line with their status as high school students. Their action is intended to assert the importance of their role in society: they are the future of our societies, and the future of our planet is their future. Secondly, these protests reveal the immobility or slowness of governments on environmental issues.

Since 2005,education for sustainable development (ESD) has been an integral part of public school curricula, providing a scientific, ethical and civic understanding of the world's complexity. However, this approach falls far short of the urgency of the ecological transition. In November 2010,UNESCO published its action plan to tackle climate change through education. But the school strikes, while endorsing the seventeen sustainable development goals published by the United Nations in 2015, are upsetting the planned agenda.

Aren't school strikes, because of their singularity, a lever for real awareness, the school strike becoming the equivalent of a hunger strike, and knowledge a necessity for survival, like food? Education as a means of emancipation is also questioned. How can we make education a tool for social transformation and individual and collective emancipation? How can we reconcile the need to think with the need to act?

Over and above education in sustainable development, some young people seem to have found their own way of protesting and holding those in power to account.

Sylvain Wagnon, Professor of Education, Faculty of Education, University of Montpellier

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.