Pushing Climate Change Issues into Schools
How a Youth-led Organisation Shifts Asian Education System
It was a rainy morning when I met Chiao-Jou, the commissioner of ‘Climate Leader for Future’, at a suburb elementary school in South East Taipei. She was taking me as an assistant for her Climate Change class. As we arrived, Mr. Hung, the Dean of Academic Affair, was waiting for us at the concourse.
‘Children will be late. They just finished a physical education class. They might be tired, but don’t worry. I believe they will like your Climate Change class.’
The children were excited, partly because we were the new faces inside the classroom. This is just a start. In the coming months, Chiao-Jou will tour around different schools with TWYCC’s project on climate change education. While the popular student activists, such as Greta Thunberg and Luisa Neubauer, tend to walk ‘outside’ schools and strike, here in Taiwan we push Climate Change issues ‘into’ schools.
Inspired by ‘Student Strike For Climate’.
Although the idea of walking ‘into’ schools seems irrelevant to the climate strike which has been launched since 2018, it is actually derived from it.
The idea was developed in 2019. Along with the other local NGOs and student societies, TWYCC was involved in a series of local campaigns as a part of the Fridays for Future international week of action. For a week, students organised different pop-up events around Taiwan, including a soapbox climate speech inside Zhongshan Metro Mall. The highlight of the week was a press conference to urge the presidential candidates to include climate action into their manifestos.
Several hundreds of people attended the campaign, yet it didn’t develop into a massive student strike as it had happened in other countries.
In some conservative people’s views, ‘Greta Thunberg might not be a positive figure because she seems to be quite direct and reckless. Harsh criticisms centred on her speeches and actions emerged in public.’ Chiao-Jou explained.
Why doesn’t a student climate strike happen in Taiwan?
As a native-grown Taiwanese, I am not surprised by their opinion. In my perspective, such opinion is common in East Asia where parents tend to set high academic expectations on their children. Driven by this ideology, children are expected to achieve academic excellence, and parents are responsible for supervising children’s learning progress.
This ideology is best exemplified by Amy Chua the ‘Tiger Mother’. In her book ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother’ she explained the principles of her parenting style: ‘(1) schoolwork always comes first; (2) an A-minus is a bad grade; (3) your children must be two years ahead of their classmates in math; (4) you must never compliment your children in public; (5) if your child ever disagrees with a teacher or coach, you must always take the side of the teacher or coach; (6) the only activities your children should be permitted to do are those in which they can eventually win a medal; and (7) that medal must be gold.’
With this background in mind, it is not hard to imagine why student strike is not a popular idea, not to mention Climate Change is not an issue for the highest urgency in Taiwan, compared to the neighbouring military threat. But the cultural difference should not be an excuse to stop climate action. We just need some magic to turn barriers into supports.
New education scheme, new advocacy opportunity.
In 2019, the Taiwanese government implemented the ‘Curriculum Guidelines of 12-Year Basic Education’ to reform the previous exam-oriented education system. It aims to ‘Facilitate Self-actualization, Adaptive Learning to Individual Fulfillment, and Life Long Learning’ by a more feasible framework. It allowed teachers to customise a curriculum that best fits the student’s needs. Student’s performance is now assessed based on an ‘Academic Portfolio’–a student curriculum vitae–instead of relying on a nationwide school entrance exam.
The reform sounds like a good idea, but the transition is not easy. Most of the teachers in Taiwan are already overworked before the reform. With the new plan, standardised teaching material is no longer available. Now they have to develop their own teaching plan which is 1) derived from the guidelines; 2) updated with the latest trend and 3) able to prove a student’s potential when it becomes a part of the Academic Portfolio. In other words, they must develop a curriculum that meets the government, the students. and the parent’s demand.
A recent survey of 1500 Taiwanese high school teachers showed that more than 80% of teachers believe the current environmental curricula need improvements, and 75% of them use internet sources such as documentaries and movies in class as a supplement. The survey also suggests the major challenges are limited class time (54.8%) and overlord teaching progress (33.9%). This difficult transition offers a unique opportunity for us. What if we make Climate Change into a school teaching material, and offer it to teachers, like an oven-ready lunch box?
Our strategy.
‘How many school days-off do you have this year due to the typhoon?’
‘No. No typhoon holidays this year.’
‘We don’t have many Typhoons or rain this year in Taiwan. But our neighbours, Japan and China, are suffering from floods. Such uneven precipitation is a result of climate change.’
As students were ready, we started the class with cases that triggered children’s life experiences or their curiosity. And we later explained the cases based on scientific knowledge. Children love it. But to my surprise, the most hard-working learners in classrooms were teachers. At the end of the class, they brought their notebooks and checked the details with us.
‘I once introduced the Plant for Planet project during the class to explain how kids can make a difference. When the class dismissed, their teacher was excited, telling me “I just plant a tree in Mexico with my cellphone!”’ Chiao-Jou said.
Teachers are not only inspired by our (multimedia) teaching materials, but also learn our storytelling strategy. As an interdisciplinary issue, the fundamental knowledges for Climate Change are scattered across different school subjects. For example, the mechanism of Climate Change is a part of Science and Technology class, while climate justice and immigration issues belong to Social Studies class. Besides, climate actions might happen during Life Curriculum class. If teachers wish to teach Climate Change at school, they will need to extract contents from different textbooks and re-organise it into a story of climate change. That takes a lot of time.
And that’s why schools welcome TWYCC to teach inside the campus. What we’ve offered is an oven-ready teaching plan: it is made according to governmental guidelines, integrated with the existing classes, and updated monthly.
Turning barriers into supports
Our Climate Change class offers students a great opportunity to turn pre-existing knowledge into real-world actions. At the end of the four-week curriculum, each student will receive a ‘certificate’ so they can share with their parents and later put it into their Academic portfolios.
‘If they (parents) are proud of it, they will encourage the teachers to continue the cooperation with TWYCC.’ Chiao-Jou explained.
Asian parents are no fans of student climate strikes. But as we transform student strikes into climate classes to support children’s academic career, parents will like it. That is how we push Climate Change issues into schools. Parents appreciate it, kids enjoy it, and teachers can use our prepared teaching material to take a break. Most importantly, climate change will become a regular part of our education system.
About ‘Climate Leader for Future’.
This is a project co-developed by Taiwan Youth Climate Coalition and Hair O’right International Corp. It was started in 2019 as a volunteer-based project which aimed to support global carbon reduction and intergenerational justice issues. Since September 2020, a full-time commissioner has been financially supported by O’right to push the project further into campus.
Please visit our Facebook Page to further understand ‘Climate Leader for Future’.
Author: Shun-Te Wang
Proofreader: Regina Chang
Special thanks: Chiao-Jou Lin
