From 2020, Italy to make climate classes a must
WORLD LEADERS GET SERIOUS ABOUT CLIMATE
Jason Horowitz | Rome:
Yes, children, climate change will be on the test.
Italy’s education minister said on Tuesday that its
public schools would soon require students in every grade to study climate
change and sustainability, a step he said would put Italy at the forefront of
environmental education worldwide.
The lessons, at first taught as part of the students’
civics education, will eventually become integrated throughout a variety of
subjects — a sort of “Trojan horse” that will “infiltrate” all courses,
education minister Lorenzo Fioramonti said.
Environmental advocates welcomed the new subject matter,
with some caveats. Teaching children about sustainability is “certainly very
important”, said Edoardo Zanchini, vicepresident of Legambiente, Italy’s
leading environmental group. But he warned that responsibility should not
simply be passed on to children. “Science tells us the next 10 years are
crucial,” he said. “We cannot wait for the next generation.”
Starting in September 2020, Fioramonti said, teachers in
every grade will lead lessons in climate change and environmental
sustainability. That 33-hour-a-year lesson, he said, will be used as a pilot
programme to ultimately fold the climate agenda of the United Nations into the
entire curriculum. So merely studying place names and locations in geography
class? “Forget that,” Fioramonti said. Geography courses will soon study the
impact of human actions on different parts of the planet, too, he said.
Fioramonti is a member of the anti-establishment 5-Star
Movement, which has long put environmental concerns at the heart of its
identity. He had encouraged students to take part in climate protests last
September instead of attending class.
Until August, 5-Star had governed Italy for more than a
year with the nationalist League party, led by Matteo Salvini, who is still the
country’s most popular politician, and who has a sceptical view of climate
change.
But as President Trump began pulling the US out of the
landmark Paris Agreement this week, Fioramanti said that every country needed
to do its part to stop the “Trumps of the world” and that his ambition was to
show children there was another way. “The 21st-century citizen,” the minister
said, “must be a sustainable citizen”. NYT NEWS SERVICE
LESSONS OF CHANGE:
From September next year, teachers in every grade will
lead lessons in climate change and environmental sustainability
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