It is not the role of schools to solve the climate crisis, or any of the other multiple crises facing humankind. But we can choose to equip young people to face the future, say Dr Malcolm Groves and Professor John West-Burnham
The future we all now face is not what we might have once thought it was. The pandemic has seen to that.
The virus has exposed fissures and weaknesses in our social and economic life, probing them and testing us in the process. It would be both impractical and wrong to attempt simply to put things back the way they were before Covid-19 emerged.
The global failure to act on climate change, the deepening inequalities in society, and an over-reliance on excessive consumption are deep-rooted problems that afflict every country.
Taken as a whole they point to the ultimate unsustainability of many of our established patterns of living.
The pandemic has highlighted both the inter-connectedness and the fragility of our world. Not only will the future be different, whether we like it or not, it needs to be different.
