Tackling Climate Change through Curriculum Change
Climate/Environmental Education in the Indian Classrooms
On a very broad scale, the environmental impact of an educated person is different from that of indigenous people or ecosystem people. Here, an educated person is mostly someone who has a modern skill-set and an income which takes care of his/her creature comforts. Ecosystem people are those people who 'depend on the natural environments of their own locality to meet most of their material needs.'
An educated workforce conventionally boosts the economy of the state, which in today's scenario, is responsible for increased emissions. At the same time, an educated population possesses lower fertility as people choose to limit their number of offspring, theoretically resulting in lower emissions while ecosystem people who usually lack formal education tend to have larger families.
Where does this bring us?
Formal education changes lives and lifestyles. It gives us the opportunity to spend our lives in a way unlike other inhabitants of the planet, or even our ancestors for that matter. Education is in a sense, a ticket to a huge chunk of the world's resources.
The development of a country is considered proportional to education. But is development commendable if accompanied by drudgery and death due to environmental disasters? What is the use of
literacy
numeracy
and even democracy
when developmental hypocrisy
is leading us towards a climate catastrophe?
How useful is an education that mostly distances learners from their environment and leaves them ill-equipped to deal with an impending crisis?
A climate for solutions. Solutions for the climate
Fortunately, world leaders realised the importance of education in the environmental context quite a long time ago. The International Conference on Environmental Education took place in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1977.
The fourth and latest conference of this kind happened in our own country in Ahmedabad in 2007. However, Indians are yet to experience stronger strides in climate education, which will hopefully be offered to today's learners before climate change actually strikes hard.
Low weightage in exam, extraordinary weightage in real life
"Life is an exam where the syllabus is unknown and question papers are not set. Nor are there model answer papers." - Sudha Murty (teacher, social worker and author)
If anything, climate change exacerbates the situation in this quote to a do-or-die level. However, school teachers and students often miss the point. Students read the 'Waste Management' chapter in Geography because it is scoring as only straightforward questions are asked in the exam.
It is ironic to see students mug up such lessons for five-mark questions in the board exams but carelessly throw a plastic wrapper which could take 500 years to break down. Also, the chapters 'Climate of India' and 'Agriculture' are usually avoided as they are considered tedious.
This attitude must be changed. Happening chapters must be given extra importance. Teachers must lay emphasis on such lessons and make students grasp the concepts fully.
Waste management practices of the school should be made transparent and students must be told where their pencil shavings and empty refills go. Climate, not just weather, must be described in today's classrooms as a changing entity.
In my opinion, chapters like Agriculture and Climate should not be finished in one go for the sake of mid-term examinations. Instead, they should be taught in real-time. For instance, students should be taught that the onset of southwest monsoon winds coincides with the beginning of the new academic year in June and at the same time, farmers sow Kharif crops. Yes, this must be explained in the month of June!
Climate change and I
Climate change is perceived by some as a distant phenomenon, both in terms of actual distance and time. To tackle this, subjects must be taught in such a way that students make vital connections with the events around them.
For example, schools declare a holiday when heavy rains cause waterlogging in Mumbai and my school in Kota, Rajasthan, extended the winter vacation by ten days in 2017 as the temperatures did not rise above 5 degree Celsius.
However, I have never come across texts in a school that thoroughly explore a particular region, despite having studied in seven Indian states. Although I studied in central boards, I think that climate and environmental education can be fruitful only when decentralised region-wise. The syllabus can be uniform for Classes X and XII though.
When a boy off the coast of the Bay of Bengal observes changes in the sea, a girl in Mumbai will know why she is asked to wear slippers instead of school shoes during rainy season while a kid in a microscopic, land-locked village will be able to guess if the locusts will descend.
We can be united and strong enough to mitigate climate change only when we understand its regional nuances as well as its overall potential scale for destruction.
Information emissions
Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg in now a household name. It is highly unlikely that students who learnt about her heard of her in school. It is also very unlikely that schools will teach about Greta as the focal point of her activism is to hold a strike during school hours demanding climate action.
Then how did she become popular among the Indian youth? The answer is social media. It is safe to say that regular social media users know some or the other thing about climate change.
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| Schoolkids fishing during holidays in a village. |
It is imperative for educationists to bring mainstream or at least climate information to disadvantaged students. However, while urbanites know of the Fridays for Future movement, students in rural areas (ecosystem people) have hands-on information about their local weather, wildlife and environment.
This information disproportion must be bridged by teaching the former to connect with their immediate surroundings and exposing the latter to happenings worldwide.
Wilderness in a warming world
"I suppose I have done my bit, now it's up to you younger people." - Salim Ali (Birdman of India)
Although school students learn about national parks and wildlife sanctuaries and are taught to mark them correctly on the map of India, they are barely taught to appreciate the wilderness around them. A child looking out of the classroom window at a cuckoo preening itself or a squirrel nibbling something is often reprimanded.
In my opinion, observation of nature must be a compulsory activity at least for younger students. Identification guides to birds, butterflies, reptiles and mammals, which are usually expensive, must be provided in school libraries.
Observing birds and small mammals may be an exhilarating experience for city kids who might not have paid much attention to urban wildlife previously. At the same time, rural children may know to identify different species in their native language as a part of their traditional knowledge.
When casual observations of nature are documented on platforms like eBird and iNaturalist, they become valuable citizen science inputs. A teacher or an interested senior student could be roped in to upload the observations of 'citizen scientists of Class V-A'! Further, competitions can be conducted for the same in and among schools.
Although this does not directly translate into climate change education, it would give meaning to the saying: "The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see". Observing nature is a priceless skill and can be life-enriching when learnt at a young age.
Designing disaster, deranging from management
"By 2030, improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning." - Target 13.3 under SDG 13 Climate Action
I clearly remember when I was in Grade VIII, I was waiting for the teacher to start the chapter 'Disaster Management' in Social Science. I had read all the topics beforehand and was even ready with answers to questions. But to my utter disappointment, the teacher skipped the entire chapter!
I observed later that there is no such topic in the syllabi of Grades X and XII either. The closest I have experienced of disaster management education is the fire drill, and that too was conducted only in my Mumbai school.
Disasters, irrespective of their magnitude and nature have a lasting impact on people's psychology. My friend was in Kashmir during the 2014 floods in that region and her entire book collection got washed away and destroyed. As a consequence, her family was not keen on buying any books except study material (which barely offers inputs on disaster management).
Disaster management not only helps in battling disasters but also provides coping mechanism. At no cost should this subject be ignored. Even if we look at 2020, we were not only hit by COVID-19 but also by a tumult of cyclones, floods and forest fires, most of which were climate related disasters.
Climate change education is incomplete without proper disaster management and students must be taught to think and act practically whenever disaster strikes. The natural disasters the learner's particular region is prone to must be kept in mind during teaching.
Prayers plus practicals
"In the biggest sense, environmental education means learning to maintain a balanced way of life. All religions agree that we cannot find lasting inner satisfaction based on selfish desires and acquiring the comforts of material things." - Dalai Lama XIV
The year 2012 saw more than a thousand heatwaves in India. Rajasthan bore the brunt of the blaze while Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (then a single entity) were also hard-hit. The scalding summer was followed by scanty rainfall and there were frequent power-cuts.
I was studying in a school in Secunderabad during that time and all students were handed out a three-line prayer to recite during prayer-time. It went on to simply say: Lord Almighty, halt the heat and bestow rains upon us; preserve our people and livestock, Amen.
Now this can be deciphered in two opposite ways: sighing at the paltry extent of climate education in schools or, considering this as a way to convey information regarding the environment to a large number of people. I would not have remembered anything about the heatwaves if my whole class was not made to recite this prayer in unison.
People are inclined towards different faiths or none at all. Nonetheless, everyone feels a spiritual connection with nature.
Climate change educators must take advantage of this to spread awareness. Children in rural areas may know traditional or folk songs and prayers that praise the Earth and vow to protect it and these could be used as effective tools. After all, conservation is "90% communication and just 10% science."
In 2015, two benchmark publications regarding climate change were made. One was the Paris Agreement which makes multiple appearances in environmental literature and the other was Pope Francis' encyclical letter titled Laudato Si'. If something when read, could move people enough to act against climate change, it is more likely the latter.
Curriculum change for climate change
In the academic year 2020-21 which started a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, most boards reduced the syllabus for Grades X and XII. Among other topics in Grade XII, nearly three-fourths of Environmental Biology was slashed, including Pollution and Environmental Problems.
If this is the importance given to environmental education when we are staring at an imminent climate crisis, then even a first grader would say that we are heading the wrong way. Even if this instance is overlooked on grounds of the pandemic, it is undeniable that climate education has not been given the urgent importance it requires.
As discussed earlier, it gets lesser weightage compared to other topics. There are quite a few processes and substances that we learn about, especially in Chemistry, that the books do not even mention are environmentally degrading and toxic.
Apart from careful structural changes that can be made in the curriculum, the questioning pattern can be modified meaningfully. The possibilities are endless in the Languages as well as in Biology as it is essentially the study of life. For other subjects, here are a few (original) examples:
- Mathematics: The sum of the per capita emissions of the United States and India in 2020 was 16 tons. Find the per capita emissions of both the countries if their product is 25.56. [Answer is here]
- Physics: Tina, Tara and Tanya live in the same locality and go to the same school that is 4 km away. They go by car, local train and bus respectively, The train travels at a speed of 30 km/h and stops twice for 20 seconds on the way. For every 1 km the car moves at a speed of 40 km/h, it stops for 2 minutes due to traffic. Tanya rides her bicycle at 20 km/h. Who will reach school first? Whose carbon footprint will be the least?
- Chemistry: Write the molecular masses of any four greenhouse gases (GHGs) and mention which of them can cause acid rains.
- Economics: "Ecology is permanent economy" - Sunderlal Bahuguna. Give reasons to support this statement.
Walking the talk after talking it
Dialogue on climate change is happening at the international level on a serious note. Despite the fact that climate change cannot be addressed by individuals alone, the main task at an educationist's hands is to mould learners into a climate-sensitive generation. Climate change is a consequence of our reckless actions. The goal of climate education is to make students environmentally-responsible.
Many schools insist on buying new stationery kits every academic year and most of it just goes waste. I still have a box full of crayons. sketch pens and paints after finishing schooling. Minimalism must be encouraged in schools and projects made by upcycling materials must not be disapproved by teachers (this has happened with me).
Critical questions should run in children's minds. Is it logical to submit an Environmental Chemistry project-work in a plastic file? This can happen only when there is climate dialogue in classrooms where it all comes down to questioning.
From preoccupation with climate to climate occupation
"Marine Biology is one of those careers that every child dreams of at one point, but so many don't follow through. If everyone who dreamed of it had pursued it, we might have saved the oceans by now!" - Asha de Vos (marine biologist and ocean educator)
The biggest blow is that after schooling, students who want to take up an environmental course have very few options at the undergraduate level in India. Also, there are few who want to do so as the paycheque for an environmental career is not considered attractive, while climate change is going to be the world's worst financial disaster ever.
While anybody in any profession can work to save the Earth through his/her own job, it is high time that environmentally-focussed green jobs be created. We need a generation of professionals whose goal is to avert climate change. This can be done only with incentives from large companies and the government.
A major part of my schooling was done in the period 2008-2018 and during this time, 3.6 million people living in coastal areas were displaced. Climate change is already underway and we are not ready for it - neither in theory not in practicals - if put in a school-like way.
By 2050, rainfall is expected to rise by 6% and temperature by 1.6 degrees and India's internally displaced populations are growing in magnitude with every climate-combat action delayed and every harmful environmental impact overlooked. We surely do not want to see a child who is not only out of school, but also out of home and essentially out of hope, in a world ravaged by climate change.
One of the targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 Quality Education is to "ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development by 2030." Less than eight years are left to make it happen.
The climate clock is ticking.
