This should work out well, eh?
New Zealand schools to teach students about climate crisis, activism and ‘eco anxiety’
Every school in New Zealand will this year have access to materials about the climate crisis written by the country’s leading science agencies – including tools for students to plan their own activism, and to process their feelings of “eco-anxiety†over global heating.
The curriculum will put New Zealand at the forefront of climate change education worldwide; governments in neighbouring Australia and the United Kingdom have both faced criticism for lack of cohesive teaching on the climate crisis. The New Zealand scheme, which will be offered to all schools that teach 11 to 15 year-old students, will not be compulsory, the government said.
“One of the pieces of feedback we’ve got from teachers around the country is that they’re really crying out for something like this, because kids are already in the conversation about climate change,†said James Shaw, New Zealand’s climate change minister and co-leader of the left-leaning Green Party.
They’ll be teaching the kids that everything is horrible and they are all doomed and the Earth is doomed and that they should feel horrible and anxious and neurotic, then tell them how to process those feelings of Doom, which shall surely involve activism and agitating for the Government to take Other People’s money, freedom, and choice.
“They’re seeing stuff on social media on a daily basis and none of it’s good news, and the sense of powerlessness that comes from that is extremely distressing.â€
Perhaps they need to stop reading unhinged doomsayers, put down the phone, and go outside and trek around a beautiful country.
Materials created for teachers that were provided to the Guardian suggest students keep a “feelings thermometer†to track their emotions, learn how to change defeatist self-talk, and consider how their feelings could generate action and response.
This won’t work out well. Perhaps it is a good thing that the government is banning firearms, because these kids are going to graduate with serious mental health issues.
