Teaching climate change: A challenge for the present time

From Puerto Natales to Santiago there are 3 thousand kilometers, a distance that by bus exceeds 40 hours and that by plane is shortened to four. This is part of the trip that the schoolchildren made to participate again in the meeting framed within the Global Youth Climate Pact (GYCP) which took place on Wednesday, April 27. They were also joined by students from Chiloé and Chincolco, reaching a total of 41 young people.

The objective is clear: to talk and debate about the present and the future of the planet together with researchers, academics and activists. That's what the meeting called “Teaching climate change: A challenge for the present time” Organized by the Faculty of Education of the Catholic University, and with the support of Ministry of Education and School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences of Paris. The GYCP project, led by an academic from the UC School of Education, Luis Flores, has worked since 2015 with schools from Putre to Puerto Williams and Rapa Nui, and this is the first time that the discussion has been held in Santiago since the start of the pandemic.

“The first objective of the project and of this conversation is to show what teaching and learning are part of the same circuit, there is no object of knowledge locked in a disciplinary order or learning determined by a single methodology (…) We don't learn to change our way of thinking from a course or subject, we learn to think differently when we change the plane of knowledge, its perspective, its design, its structure and its logic," Flores explained.

An opinion shared by the rector of the UC, Ignacio Sánchez, who pointed out that “Education is the way to deliver knowledge and reach young people, who are the ones who will lead the pending actions to build a better planet. In your hands is the present and future”.

A crossroads of realities

Students from different parts of the country participated in the instance, who shared projects related to problems present in their localities.

In the Magallanes region, for example, there are natural resources such as stromatolites, fossil structures that make up the oldest evidence of microbiological life on earth, and that according to the students Pablo Cárdenas, Génesis Ramírez and Nathaly Álvarez, from Puerto Natales, are threatened by global warming. Region that just housed the Green Workshops, held in January , where different students were able to visit these natural spaces and learn about their fragility in the face of the climate crisis.

One of them was Gabriela Prado, from the town of Chincolco, located in central Chile, who pointed out that "when they told us that the south was in a drought, we were impressed, because it rains there almost every week, but in Chincolco it rains hopefully once a anus". In the workshops, the student was able to talk with scientists and students from different parts of Chile, and understand that “Yes, they are in a drought, but they are doing things on time. They are declaring the catastrophe when they should, so they have a better chance of being able to solve it, because we in Chincoclo are in a very bad state, we no longer have water in the river".

"How these emotions that are associated with climate change are mixed, the concern they have and the fear that it generates for the future is super complex to address from education," explained the community psychologist from the University of Chile, Catherine Valenzuela, present in one of the panels. "We must be able to incorporate all these concerns and seek a solution among all of us, because we can solve this problem through this change of thinking, by relearning how to relate to each other and to nature."

the present and the future

One of the central axes of the meeting was to give relevance to the present, regarding problems of the future. Along these lines, students from Chiloé presented short-term projects that involve actions such as rainwater harvesting, recycling training, and the replacement of synthetic fertilizers with others of natural origin.

"Parallel to this, we are going to carry out an awareness campaign, which is something central," said the student. Katherine Montiel. “We are a generation that has access to a lot of information. We grew up in a different context, so we have a lot of power and that power is speech, being able to communicate and express what we know. Many of us were not taught these subjects by our parents, so our strong point is being able to talk with them, with our grandparents”.

"One is being written new constitution, and it is an issue where climate change has to be addressed, but many of us are not going to vote because we are minors, so we have to talk to the people who make decisions today and are present. We can give options, we can talk so that there is a future, but we also have to worry about the present."added the schoolgirl.

Relive the encounter: