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rethinking schools
Rep. Barbara Lee Calls for Climate Education in All Schools
“We need to teach every young person the human impacts of climate change and how to combat the climate crisis before it is too late.”
Sep 20, 2019
In May of 2016, the school board in Portland, Oregon, passed what is believed to be the first comprehensive climate education resolution in the country. It called for climate justice curriculum, increased professional development, support for student activism, and for the school district to abandon the use of text materials that deny the human roots of the climate crisis or minimize its effects.
"Imagine if young people throughout the United States had a climate justice education that asked them to consider the roots of the climate crisis, to examine the profoundly unequal ways the crisis is manifesting itself throughout the world, and to think of themselves as activists who can make the world cleaner, safer, and more equal."
This climate education work gets a big boost today from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) who is remembered for her courageous stand as the only member of Congress to vote against the authorization of the use of force in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Today, commemorating what promises to be the largest climate strike ever, Lee's office says she will officially introduce a House Resolution to support the teaching of climate change in schools throughout the United States.
Like Portland's school board resolution, this is not only a call for more "climate literacy." Lee's resolution also emphasizes that the climate crisis is a social crisis. In introducing the resolution, she said, "We need to teach every young person the human impacts of climate change and how to combat the climate crisis before it is too late."
The resolution emphasizes that "climate change is a generational social justice, racial justice, and human rights issue." It has been endorsed by diverse education and environmental justice organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers, the Sierra Club, the National Center for Science Education, the Mom's Clean Air Force, Students for Climate Action, and Rethinking Schools.
The resolution begins from the premise that student climate activism is essential, but "in order to meaningfully act upon our changing climate and changed world, young people need education about its causes, consequences, anticipated future impacts, and possible solutions." And, "when students engage in a climate change curriculum, they can develop a greater sense of efficacy about their capacity to address critical social and environmental issues."
The congresswoman's House Resolution emphasizes, a changing climate "disproportionately affects students of color and students in poverty, thereby exacerbating existing inequalities and limiting equality of opportunity."
Lee is also a co-sponsor of HR 109, The Green New Deal--the most ambitious Congressional statement outlining how to tackle the climate crisis, and simultaneously address broader social inequality. But as Rethinking Schools magazine editors pointed out in a recent editorial, as ambitious as the Green New Deal is, it never mentions the word schools.
Thus, Lee's resolution is a welcome gesture, reminding her colleagues--and everyone else--that the climate crisis especially affects young people, that young people are and will be at the center of those demanding action, and that the Green New Deal has profound implications for our schools.
Here in Portland, Oregon, where I work with the Portland Public Schools Climate Justice Committee, emboldened by the promises of the school board's 2016 climate justice resolution, last spring, students and climate activists raised a series of demands for more robust implementation of the resolution. One of these demands was that the school district hire someone whose only job would be to promote climate justice education throughout the school district--working with students, frontline communities, environmental and social justice organizations, teachers, administrators, and with the school district's Climate Justice Committee. In May, Portland's school board authorized funds for this position, and the country's first "Climate Change and Climate Justice Programs Manager" begins work next week.
In a statement Thursday, Rep. Lee said, "By failing to address climate change in a meaningful way, we are failing our children--and they know it."
Imagine if young people throughout the United States had a climate justice education that asked them to consider the roots of the climate crisis, to examine the profoundly unequal ways the crisis is manifesting itself throughout the world, and to think of themselves as activists who can make the world cleaner, safer, and more equal. The House Resolution now introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee may be an important step in that direction.
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As Cities Give Columbus the Boot, Indigenous Peoples Day Spreads Across US
'Knowing the facts of Columbus’s life, it seems astonishing that he is still treated with honor in many places.'
Oct 12, 2015
While the annual celebration of Christopher Columbus has fueled years of outrage, satire, and resistance, this year, an alternative holiday recognizing the original inhabitants of the United States appears to have reached the mainstream.
In the past two months alone, eight major municipalities--including Albuquerque, New Mexico; Portland, Oregon; St. Paul, Minnesota; Bexar County, Texas; Anadarko, Oklahoma; Alpena, Michigan; Lawrence, Kansas; Carrboro, North Carolina; and Olympia, Washington--have opted to pay homage to the history and culture of the country's true native people by celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day on the second Monday in October. This wave follows recent moves in Seattle and Minneapolis, among others.
"For the Native community here, Indigenous Peoples Day means a lot," Nick Estes, who helped coordinate the city celebration after Albuquerque city council issued a declaration on the matter, told the Associated Press. "We actually have something. We understand it's just a proclamation, but at the same time, we also understand this is the beginning of something greater."
In Los Angeles on Sunday, native activists and supporters marched in protest of the holiday while a growing number of teachers are moving away from the traditional, Euro-centric curriculum on America's so-called "discovery."
The movement dates back to 1990 when South Dakota became the first state to address the controversy over Columbus Day when they renamed the holiday Native American Day. Two years later, Berkeley, California, introduced the first Indigenous Peoples Day. And while workers in 23 U.S. states enjoyed a paid day off in his honor, people across the country rallied online under the banner of #IndigenousPeoplesDay to call attention to the atrocities committed by and in the spirit of Christopher Columbus.
"Knowing the facts of Columbus's life, it seems astonishing that he is still treated with honor in many places," writer and film producer Bayard Johnson wrote in a column on Monday. "Was he elevated to hero status because nobody knew the real story about Columbus's inhumanity, his atrocities, his delusions, his failures? Or does history consider his crimes insignificant because his victims were mostly Indians?"
Detailing his many voyages and exploits, Johnson notes that while Columbus may not have "discovered the New World," he did lay the groundwork for generations of Europeans to "loot and plunder."
"He created a blueprint," Johnson continues. "Arrive uninvited. Pretend friendship. Take over. Enslave all natives who aren't slaughtered. Make money shipping slaves overseas. Keep some slaves to dig for gold and treasure. This happened again and again, following the protocol Columbus invented. This was the real discovery of Columbus--how Europe could pillage and get rich off the Americas and the rest of the world."
This legacy of colonialism, argues The Intercept's Jon Schwarz, has influenced everything from global trade deals to Israel's occupation of Palestine. "We shouldn't celebrate it," Schwarz writes. "But if we want to comprehend the world--and we should, since our lives depend on it--we have to understand it."
As Bill Bigelow, educator, curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, and the co-director of the Zinn Education Project, wrote at Common Dreams last week, "If Indigenous peoples' lives mattered in our society, and if Black people's lives mattered in our society, it would be inconceivable that we would honor the father of the slave trade with a national holiday."
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