Climate change to be cut from new Geography curriculum

The Guardian newspaper reports today (Tuesday 19 March) that the new draft guidelines for the Geography national curriculum for children under 14 years old does not mention ‘debate about climate change’.  If this happens, it will be left to teachers to choose whether to teach it, apart from a single mention of the human part in CO2 emissions in the chemistry section. With the pressure of time, or personal opinion, many may not do so.

People and Planet, a student network that campaigns on the environment as well as global poverty and human rights, has launched a campaign to lobby ministers about this proposed change: http://peopleandplanet.org/teach-climate. The general secretary of the University & College Union Sally Hunt says this "simply must be taught in schools".

The Department for Education is now consulting on this proposal, so there is time to make your opinion known if you feel this is important.

There are those who deny that human behaviour is responsible for the changes we are seeing in our climate – or climate chaos as it is more accurately known. Surely though, whatever your opinion, it cannot be right not to introduce the topic at all before the age of 14 in schools, when the majority of respected scientists are convinced that this is the most urgent and dangerous issue facing the planet. If they are right, we have little time to address our behaviour before it is too late. Some scientists say it is already too late to prevent catastrophic effects and mitigation is all we can hope for.

Primary school children are often more concerned about this issue than adults and can educate their parents about care for the environment. We should protest about this particular way of slimming down the curriculum. http://peopleandplanet.org/teach-climate