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- Convenors:
-
Georgeta Stoica
(Centre Universitaire de Recherche et Formation (CUFR) de Mayotte)
Aline Tribollet (IRD)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Peter Froggatt Centre (PFC), 02/011
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel invites papers offering a critical examination of the environmental education practices, environmental awareness programs, Fridays for Future actions etc. We particularly welcome contributions on what we term "children empowerment" in the context of a fast-changing society.
Long Abstract:
Despite the "code red" warning from the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the Earth Summits conferences and the appearance of Anthropocene new geological epoch (Crutzen, 2002) few concrete initiatives and proposals for changes have been advanced by political representatives from different countries. It is in this context that a powerful voice appeared, that of Greta Thunberg at the Cop 24 United Nations climate change summit in 2018. The Greta Thunberg speeches have contributed to an increased awareness about environment and climate change in both children and adults. Her urgent call for actions has been sustained by millions of teenagers that support her in challenging political institutions and powerful personalities. All this in a context, where there is a need to empower future generations so that they can act and think critically about the accelerated changes (Eriksen 2016) associated with environmentalism and sustainability.
Considering that environmental education (Kopnina 2012) is left at the margins of the teaching activities at the benefit of core subjects such as Literacy and Math and that children's proposals are not taken seriously, this panel offers a critical examination of the environmental education practices but also of the actions that are happening outside of the school i.e. environmental awareness programs, scientific educational programs, Fridays for Future actions etc.
We welcome empirically informed and/or theoretical discussions that address one or more of the following themes: youth activism and climate change, children empowerment and environmental governance, NGOs and environmental protection, environmental awareness and schools curricula.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 July, 2022, -Magdalena Craciun (University of Bucharest)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I explore on how the introduction of plastics and their ills as a topic for environmental education in Romania, laudable as it is, tends to strengthen neoliberal mantra of individual responsibility more than cultivate critical eco-mindsets.
Paper long abstract:
Plastics have become an intrinsic part of modern lives to the degree that it is hard for us to imagine a world without these materials or even notice their presence. Yet, the many ills of plastics and their contributions to climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution have increasingly been brought to public attention. In recent years, a globally circulating discourse has demonised plastics as dystopian materials that should be reduced, avoided, and eliminated. In this paper, drawing upon online and offline research carried out since 2020, I explore how this changing image of plastics is incorporated in environmental education in Romania. This is a society where environmental education has largely been delegated to parents, communities and NGOs, mandatory classes for primary and secondary schools being introduced in the curricula only starting with 2023. I focus on initiatives to raise awareness about plastic waste and pollution, not only environmental education programmes, but also eco-art performances, repurposing workshops, campaigns for cleaning-up rivers and the Danube Delta, campaigns for promoting selective waste collection and experiments with plastic bottles deposit schemes. I pay attention to who and for whom formulates the messages that these activities and programmes circulate and to the means they employ to deliver them. More, I foreground who sponsors these programmes and inquire about direct or indirect influence on content. Laudable as they are, these diverse programmes converge in the neoliberal ways in which they teach children to consume, use and recycle plastics ‘responsibly’, conveniently obscuring plastics’ connection to fossil fuels.
Philippe Charpentier (Cufr Mayotte) Georgeta Stoica (Centre Universitaire de Recherche et Formation (CUFR) de Mayotte) Aline Tribollet (IRD)
Paper short abstract:
The Future Maore Reef project on which this paper will focus, aims, at enabling pupils from two elementary schools, one from Mayotte island (Indian ocean) and the other from Bondy (mainland France), to become aware of problems linked to climate change and to be actors in coral reef protection.
Paper long abstract:
In Education and Sociology, Durkheim (1922) argued that children are born into a given society that pre-exists them and to which they must adapt, by means of knowledge and education provided within the schools. Today, climate change issues are on the agenda of governments and international institutions alike Cop 21, UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, etc. and are one of the major challenges of our time. Under these conditions, and knowing that science subjects are not the most taught disciplines in French primary schools (and not only) (Philippot and Baillat, 2009), the following question arises: How can primary school pupils be made actively and knowledgeably aware of the impact of climate change?
The Future Maore Reef project on which this paper will focus, aims, at enable pupils from two elementary schools from Mayotte island (Indian ocean) and Bondy (mainland France) to become aware of the problems linked to climate change and be themselves actors of scientific practices through activities linked to a better knowledge of corals and cutting techniques. In both cases, the pupils in these schools, whether they are close to the sea (those in Mayotte) or far from it (those in Bondy), are encouraged to do science with the scientists involved in the project, and to "get their hands dirty" (Charpak, 2011).
Gheorghita Geana (Academia Romana)
Paper short abstract:
Often, children’s traditional games reveal profound reflections and mental concerns. Such manifestations are perfectly coherent with the state of mind of Little Prince. This innocent and genuine wisdom of children is the basic premise of their future engagement when they become adults.
Paper long abstract:
Beyond their function as simple amusing moments in spending time, children’s traditional games (and daily conversations as well) point out profound reflections and mental concerns of the little participants. Either they imitate adults’ work activities or let themselves absorbed by the games as such, children are clearly oriented in their behaviour according to the highest human values like those involved in the tension between death and life, individual and social, good and bad, etc. Concrete examples from the Romanian traditional culture are brought for sustaining this idea ‒ among them: a game in which a “dead” child is “resurrected” by sprinkling him/her with “living water”, and another one in which “the becoming of the world as a fight between God and Devil for winning the human souls” (Geană 2020) is imagined. These manifestations are perfectly coherent with the state of mind expressed by Little Prince in several of his apophthegmatic sentences as: “If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom”, or: “Happiness doesn’t lie in the objects we gather around us. To find it, all we need to do is open our eyes”, and in many others of the kind. The main idea of the present paper is that this innocent and genuine wisdom of children is the basic premise of their future engagement in society when they become adults.