The Times Stirring Up Battlelines Between Teachers On Climate Change?!

Times Backlash?

“The Times they are a changing” sang Bob Dylan, and he should know, he lived and wrote about some of the most game-changing times of the 20^th century, culminating whilst still alive in 2016, with the Nobel Prize for literature .

So, what is the confuffle about, rhetorically speaking? And to avoid ending on climatic calamity with a pronouncement of frivolity, this sentence now ends without a question mark. In the event any teachers consider my use of a foreign language flawed and confuffle is a word I made up, I would like to remind them that my last language was English. So I start with a disadvantage. Let’s move on to the more relevant Times article by Emma Yeomans recently. The Times and Yeomans are both names with very fixed demographics in press circles and radiate outwards from the Home County Shires, to the colonies and on to where they hit a brick wall at China. Where such a conflagration of etiquette would be put down like a plurality of dog in a wet market.

"No you don’t!" have replied these "wrong wing" Headteachers who don’t care a hoot about politics on any “wing", if it affects their primary role as educators. And the piece ends with a call to a Motte and Bailey fallacy and, in all probability, a host of other equally absurd nonsenses which is now seen as Fake News, Murdoch Fake News, Fox Fake News, Trump Fake News. You get the idea! And which you can absorb in any right wing or left wing nonsense print sheet or news station anywhere. These are the same tactics which have been appallingly peddled in the US media to humble a nation in the eyes of the world. Emma's article is low level journalism because it is insidious. This is why Headteachers are calling it out. Because insidious has a tendency to creep everywhere when no-one is looking and especially when we need our kids to understand the reasons behind Climate Change and learn the tools they will need to combat it from getting worse. Much worse.

Ah Emma, do you see what disruptive journalism leads to...time moves on...but has the Times?

Are we really a nation of right wing pedagogues, is what is riling these teachers. These are not front line Climate Change activists but they may become so, if they were not before and when this ideology is peddled as journalism in one of the world’s foremost of respected newspapers.

Listen to the outrage being emitted by Headteachers throughout Britain and beyond, those educators of future Prime Ministers, Captains of Industry and dare I say, the Dylans and visionaries of tomorrow. Which, for concerned Headteachers who have to think ahead, is today.

Lisa, a teacher from Devon says .."There are NOT two sides to Climate Change!  There is ONLY ONE side and our children's parents are demanding we teach every aspect of it to ensure they are prepared! We have no choice,  because their children are reading the most devastating stories in the press and asking us why we are not showing them the solutions!"  The most switched-on borough in London chimes in like a Westminster Clock Tower tolling doomsday, “Schools with the “right” Leadership Teams in the most switched-on and forward thinking City are already upskilling their teachers to deliver Climate Literacy in their schools, to prepare their pupils to be the First in the world..."We will teach Greta's values, not Katharine Birbalsingh's values"...  ALL our Hammersmith & Fulham Schools are already working their way through the eduCCate Global Bronze and Silver Award, so that we start with a Sustainability & Climate Literacy Leadership Team in EACH of our schools! We don't intend stopping there either! Our Leadership Team, from the top down, is clear that we must prepare all stakeholders for what the Climate Emergency is delivering and that is what we are doing."

In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Vijaya Kumari Sathyan, with her Certified Sustainability & Climate Literacy Leadership Teams, points out that her teams are already teaching all their students, after achieving the eduCCate Global Bronze and Silver Award ..." we need to teach our children the truth about Climate Change from the age of three, not about two sides but the ONLY side!"

Claire Robinson of Holme Grange is the First Headteacher in the world to be a Certified Carbon Literacy Teacher! Her school is also the very first to use the eduCCate Global Media Portal, where Climate Change issues will be discussed and written about by the Pupils, Teachers and their family members, as indeed they are simultaneously already paying attention to delivering direct climate initiatives like The Carbon Footprint Buster Challenge. "Holme Grange is proud to be the First School in the World with eduCCate Global Certified Carbon Literacy Teachers and our pupils will be the First to be taught Transition Engineering, Sustainable Business Management, Rebuild Economics, International Environmental Law, Permaculture & Bio-Diversity, Conservation, as well as a fully Cross-Curricular Climate Curriculum. We are preparing our pupils to lead the world with solutions to the climate crisis. This type of journalism does nothing to help us deliver this message"

Head teacher Sally Brooks believes Katherine Birbalsingh’s “common sense” is a mole’s view of a mountain from the bowels of the Earth saying, “Common sense is not common when you get the proportion mixed up with perspective. This surely is the wrong perspective?! We should be teaching our pupils all they need to know now, especially when their very futures are at risk"