After declaring a ‘climate emergency’, Devon councils are sending schools teaching materials from the Devon Climate Emergency initiative that urge children to abandon meat and listen to whale songs to address “climate anxiety”. The Telegraph has more.
Teaching materials sent to schools last month by the Devon Climate Emergency (DCE), a local authority-led climate change initiative, aim to combat growing “climate anxiety” among five to 16 year-olds.
Suggested lesson ideas include learning about how “young environmental campaigners” use social media in Internet Technology classes and engaging with “hard-hitting” statistics about the planet’s ecological collapse in Maths.
Schools across the ceremonial county have also been given draft letters to send to parents asking them to drive less and pack meat-free lunchboxes for their children to try once a week.
The move comes in response to Devon’s self-declared climate emergency, which was announced by a consortium of 11 councils and over a dozen public, private and voluntary organisations in May 2019.
At the time the group called for “transformational change” to meet Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050 that would see Devonians travelling less, changing their diets and using more smart energy systems.
The so-called ‘Net-Zero Visions Curriculum’, which was approved for schools by the DCE on July 21st ahead of the start of the next academic year in September, puts forward a series of lesson plans and guidance to enable teachers to overcome the challenges of educating children about climate change. …
Materials intended for use in Key Stage One to Four propose novel ways of helping pupils learn about the future of the Earth, which are said to be in response to mounting levels of anxiety among children about climate change.
One classroom exercise detailed in the curriculum involves children passing around an egg painted to look like a globe in between each other and taking a step back with every pass until it is dropped and broken.
It should then be explained, teachers are told, that “unlike the egg, the Earth can regenerate if we think about being more careful in how we act”. …
Physical Education is a chance to open “conversations about how air pollution might effect sports performance”, while Music lessons are suggested as an opportunity to study recordings such as the whale songs employed by the Save The Whales campaign in the 1970s.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.