Chapter 1: Understanding the Landscape of Teaching Global Issues

On March 15, 2019 students across the world skipped school to attend the Global Climate Strike for the Future organized by the Fridays for Future movement protesting inaction on climate change. Students in over 100 countries participated to demand action on climate change from politicians. The event built on a demonstration that Greta Thunberg initiated the previous year. At the time, she was a 15-year-old activist who skipped school on Fridays to protest outside the Swedish Parliament. Her actions inspired other student-led climate change protests in February 2019. In many countries, the Global Climate Strike was the first nationwide student strike on the issue of climate change. Yet as students marched to demand that leaders take action on climate change, the reaction of school leaders and politicians was mixed. Rather than praise young people’s initiative and courage to take social action, some leaders such as the prime ministers of England and Australia took the opportunity to suggest that the strikes were wasted time that would have been better spent staying in school.