Striking students deserve support
Lucy Gray. Remember that name. Mark it down for future reference. The Christchurch 12-year-old, in response to criticism about students taking a day off school to highlight climate change, had this to say: ‘‘Teachers, they strike all the time to get what they want and that’s just money. We want our future.’’
In the parlance of Gray and her youthful colleagues, those opposed to their stand just got ‘‘owned’’.
Gray’s argument was a fitting riposte to a strange few days of angry adult hand-wringing over agitation by some of our children for greater efforts on climate change.
Our political leaders criticised them as ‘‘waggers’’ and time-wasters; they felt more could be achieved in another day spent at school, rather than taking to the streets to highlight their elders’ perceived shortcomings.
Principals and other school leaders have also criticised the movement. Their response has been similarly patronising.
Secondary Principals’ Association president Michael Williams said any protesters would be wasting their time, that the chances of effecting any change were ‘‘probably zero’’.
Presumably he and his colleagues didn’t think that when teachers took to the streets recently to agitate for more pay and better conditions. Maybe they too should cancel the upcoming rumoured ‘‘super’’ strike, rather than ‘‘wasting good learning time’’.
We understand that the official line cannot condone students simply walking off campus without the permission of a parent or others responsible for their care. But these children deserve some support, even praise, to balance the usual adult gripes about a lazy, self-obsessed generation more fixated on social media and their phones than the future of the planet and their place in it.
We want them to be more involved, to question, to think beyond their silos of self-interest; can we really be so dismissive when they follow that advice, look a little deeper and don’t like what they see?
Gray and her Wellington counterparts Sophie Handford and Isla Day are following in the angry, marching footsteps of Swedish 16-year-old Greta Thunberg. Her solo, three-week protest outside the Swedish parliament has inspired tens of thousands of young people around the globe to remind their elders that they have become the future-eaters, the devourers of resources and opportunities that would normally pass to the next generation. And that will not be tolerated.
That echoes similar uprisings in the United States, by young people concerned about gun violence and political intransigence in the face of frequent mass shootings.
Williams and others may be right – the students’ chances of forcing change are ‘‘probably zero’’. This time.
But we disagree that they are ‘‘wasting good learning time’’. Hitting the streets will teach them the value of solidarity and the merits of putting what is learned in the classroom into action. And it is a valuable lesson for adults as well: young people have a voice and will use it. They will be seen and heard.
We want them to be more involved, to question, to think beyond their silos of self-interest; can we really be so dismissive when they follow that advice, look a little deeper and don’t like what they see?