UNESCO wants green activists in the classroom
Aug 20, 2015
Bishop Hill in Education, Greens, UN

UNESCO has published a report into Climate Change Education around the world. It's rather sinister, in a bleakly bureaucratic way.

It starts off innocently enough. In the section on England, we learn that the Conservatives are not quite on message, having shifted the focus away from "sustainability" and towards economic growth. I'm not even sure I don't detect a degree of concern from the authors when they talk about the government having brought about a shift "towards science, technology, engineering, mathematics, innovation and management competencies".

But it's in the conclusions that it gets really ugly. Here the authors suggest that what is really needed is for everyone to have "an understanding of the impact of climate change on the educational opportunities of marginalized, vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society". To do this they want environmental activism to play a prominent role in the classroom, and call on governments to give "support to non-formal educators and facilitators of [climate change education]". The are also keen for governments to try to pervert the media and civil society, with demands for government money to be ploughed into green NGOs and journalism training courses, and for support to be given to media "efforts to disseminate clear messages".

Before the Berlin Wall came down, UNESCO was widely seen in the West as a hotbed of communist troublemakers and in the 1980s the US and UK withdrew from the organisation for a while.

I think it might be time to take a step back again.

 

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