The Cambridge Primary Review Trust

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Getting to know the world

In April I wrote for CPRT about the sort of aims and approaches needed for ‘learning global.’  Since then, the world has moved on dramatically, and the question of what it means to ‘know’ the world has become more acute.

The world’s most pressing questions now find themselves in a ‘post-truth’ environment.  How can we best ‘deliberate the issues’ with primary children? I think this goes far beyond ‘core knowledge.’

The following news stories will help explain some of the difficulties involved in getting to know the world.  I would not use them with children, but what makes them difficult for us as adults also helps clarify our own understanding.

On 12th September 2011, a fire ripped through the settlement of Sinai, in Nairobi, Kenya.  It was caused by an oil pipeline leak, and many people were killed. On the same day, a British couple were attacked while on holiday on the Northern Kenyan coast. The husband was shot dead; his wife was kidnapped.

The story about the British couple was widely reported in the UK and remained in the news for many days. After a few reports on the day itself, the story about the Nairobi fire dropped out of the UK news. The amount of information that people received about these two events was quite different. What could be known or valued was determined by what seemed ‘newsworthy.’

What we get from the media (or a national curriculum) can only ever be a selection from the world: a selection usually made by others on our behalf.  That is one problem about knowing, and especially about what gets counted as ‘core’.

Initial news reports from the Kenyan fire talked of ‘dozens killed’, and later ‘at least 75’.  Because Sinai is an informal settlement, the real figure may well be unknowable.  It is hard too to know the consequences of all this for an already marginal community, in terms of the loss of homes and livelihoods, let alone at a psychological and emotional level.

It is hard to know these things, but as I write this I can start to imagine – and that is another sort of knowing.  It has to be handled with care (there is a risk of projecting our own assumptions onto this situation), but it has its place.

After the fire, people began to look at where the responsibility lay (or, as Voice of America reported, ‘Blame-Game Follows Nairobi Pipeline Blast’).

The newspaper and chat rooms were full of differing accounts: warnings about too many people living near the pipeline; government officials’ failure to relocate families; some blamed the residents for staying there; others pointed out that many had been displaced from elsewhere; many expressed fury at the Kenya Pipeline Company; at least one commentator talked of the murky politics behind the situation. BBC Nairobi correspondent, Caroline Karobia, said: ‘For the slum-dwellers, though, the reason is obvious: Poverty.’

How do we know which of these accounts to believe, many of them conflicting, some simplistic, some teetering on the edge of conspiracy theories? Can we know what really happened, and why?

I think that is possible to know: to seek truth, to find out, and come up with answers – often provisional, often contestable, but answers nonetheless.

What it means to know when we are dealing with contested knowledge, something so emotive, requires critical interrogation, exploration, debate, investigation and enquiry.  It may well also require an element of ‘facts’ (where these places are, key statistics), but we need far more.

It also requires the sort of knowing that comes from the imagination: to not lose sight of the central injustices in this story, of the reasons why people might say what they say, do what they do.  This story matters because it speaks to our humanity: it is not, cannot, merely become a case study.  We need both ‘felt understandings’ and cool analysis.

There is a further risk when we are dealing with a story like this one: it becomes part of what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called a ‘single story’: a narrative where the UK is ‘developed’ but Africa is ‘undeveloped’, full of poverty and indecipherable otherness.

The information we get is often distorted, unsubstantiated … and always partial.  We think we know things, but our sources are sometimes unreliable, restricted, biased.  We – and children – need spaces where we can critically explore crucial questions of reliability, accuracy and motive.

Here are some pointers to consider as part of a repertoire for helping children know the world.

Above all, we need narrative modes of understanding. Drama and story can help us see patterns, look for what is said and unsaid, explore different perspectives, detect bias and engage with the issues in an empathetic manner.  We can deliberately seek out alternative texts and counter-narratives (‘different stories’), first-hand accounts, or news reports from around the world.

We need to be careful about ‘balance,’ as not every voice is equally authentic or evidenced (for example, the very small proportion of scientists arguing against man-made climate change).  Children need to interrogate historical and contemporary texts (including visual and web media) – what is evidenced? what is opinion? why was it written?

Stories like Anthony Browne’s ‘Voices in the Park’ offer excellent opportunities for exploring events from different viewpoints, as do ‘flipped’ stories like ‘Maleficent,’ ‘The True Story of the Three Little Pigs’ and some of Roald Dahl’s ‘Revolting Rhymes.’

Drama, especially, gets under the skin of a story, exploring how people think and feel in demanding situations.  Role-play techniques like ‘freeze framing’ offer children opportunities to explore people’s viewpoints and feelings.  Debating-in-role gives them the opportunity to create an argument from a perspective other than their own, as can writing a persuasive text in role.

Even very young children can interrogate visual images: creating thought or word bubbles for a picture (are the thoughts and words always the same?); extending a photograph beyond its frame; considering where the photographer is in every image.  They can create their own images for different purposes: to show a friend their home area, attract tourists or encourage the council to spend more.  How do these images differ and why?

Such opportunities for questioning, dialogue and enquiry can bring light, as well as heat, to the difficult business of getting to know the world … and ultimately, enable resilience in the face of demagoguery.

Ben Ballin is a consultant to Tide~ global learning, and the Geographical Association. These ideas were initially developed for Big Brum TIE.

 

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We’re all global citizens now

Migrants are rarely out of the news – mostly with negative words attached: ‘threat’, ‘invaders’,  ‘illegal’, ‘flood’, ‘swarm’, ‘crisis’,  ‘chaos’ ‘influx’, ‘sham’, ‘terrorist’ ‘suspected’. This is particularly so at present, with immigration a key issue in the EU debate. Voters have been exhorted to consider the security threat posed by migrants. Spreading fear of migrants, as human rights campaigners point out in a recent letter to the Guardian, ‘ is an age-old racist tool designed to stoke division’.

What effect does this kind of inflammatory scare-mongering have on children?  And how as educators should we respond? At a basic level, there are direct implications for schools arising from population growth: migration puts pressure on school places. But it isn’t just a question of numbers. In their recent CPRT research review on diversity, Ainscow and his colleagues report that during the last decade the percentage of the primary cohort who were from minority ethnic groups (that is, not classified as white British) rose from 19.3 to 30.4 percent.  Schools are in the frontline of response to these demographic changes, dealing, for example, with children who are non-English speakers or who have been traumatised by their earlier experiences.

Arguably however, the most difficult challenge ensuing from anti-migrant propaganda is its insidious effect on the attitudes of children themselves. This permeates all schools, not just those directly involved in receiving migrants. The controversial DfE policy which requires schools to reinforce British identity through fundamental British values, which in its turn was triggered by the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair involving Birmingham schools, is unlikely to help in this regard.

Our first concern might be to consider how to protect children from any propaganda they are exposed to. But we need to go further. Negative stereotypes need to be countered with approaches that not only redress untruths and misrepresentations, but also shift children’s gaze to the common values of humanity, generating compassion, empathy and understanding. Schools are uniquely positioned to provide such positive influences on children and their communities.

In their CPRT research review on diversity Ainscow et al makes the same point, reminding us of the opportunities for schools offered by rapid demographic change. Migrant Help aims to address the moral panic and embrace such opportunities. It argues that historically the UK has welcomed economic migrants and those fleeing war or persecution and it seeks to promote a culture of tolerance and acceptance, and the kind of community which aspires to the Bantu notion of ‘ubuntu’. Ubuntu is a central African word that means human kindness; it includes the understanding that every human action has implications for all around us and that our identities are shaped by the past and present lives of others. This concept, and the values that underpin it, resonates with no fewer than three of CPRT’s priorities: equity, community and Sustainability.

Under the ‘ubuntu’ umbrella, Jonathan Barnes and Alex Ntung of Migrant Help Education are involved in projects that directly address these values and priorities.  One of them draws on the work of Bern O’Donoghue, an artist who addresses perceptions of migrants through her art, challenging myths and prejudice about immigration. Bern places fact-filled paper boats in public places for people to find.  So far 7000 tiny origami paper boats inscribed with little known facts about migrants have been placed around Europe and the USA (translated into 6 languages) in nooks and crannies, bus shelters, on fence posts, wall cracks and signboards in the hope that passers-by will pick them up and read them.

Bern has been working with 9 – 11 years old in Hastings primary schools associated with the Education Futures Trust. When introducing the subject of refugee boats in the Mediterranean, Bern asked children to consider parallel situations in their own lives – being in a new place, moving house, changing schools – and what might help them settle in. This drew them into conversations about what ‘our’ (European), response should/could be to migrants fleeing war and persecution.  Children too made origami boats to carry messages, and were then involved in the analysis and discussion of the messages they and others had created. Common themes emerged including friendship, kindness, fairness, home and safety – all suggestive of understanding and clarity about humanitarian values.

This small research project seemed highly meaningful to the participants, perhaps because it involved a current emotive issue that had already engaged the children at a profound emotional level and involved the application of values to an authentic context.

For the education team at Migrant Help UK there was more learning. They were reminded that youngsters are often much more generous in their responses than adults. The threat-laden language of the tabloids and ultra-nationalists was entirely missing from the children’s responses. The team reflected on how much adults have learned to live with values-compromises, values-inconsistencies, values-conflicts and values-suspension on a daily basis. Perhaps we should listen to the moral guidance of 9 year olds more often.    

Another CPRT research report, on global learning and sustainability from Doug Bourn and his IoE colleagues, reminds us of the capacities that young children have for reasoning and discussion of complex or controversial topics. They say (p23): ‘With regard to cultural diversity, research indicates that while children begin to develop prejudices at an early age, they also start to understand concepts of fairness, empathy and justice early too.’  However, the report observes that schools tend to prioritise global and sustainability themes in order to foster empathy, rather than taking a more critical approach to controversial issues such as injustice and inequality. Early intervention, the CPRT Bourn report suggests, ‘can challenge negative stereotypes before they become entrenched, and provide a scaffold into which more complex themes can be added at a later age or stage of schooling’.

While evidence from the Cambridge Primary Review Community Soundings suggested that primary aged children are generally aware of and concerned about these issues, Bourn et al note that a good deal of research shows that teachers feel less comfortable with tackling controversial issues in the classroom, perhaps fearing backlash from parents or – given recent events – government. At the NUT conference in April 2015, executive member Alex Kenny commented:  ‘The government’s promotion of “British values”, the Prevent agenda and the use of Ofsted to monitor these is having the effect of closing down spaces for such discussion and many school staff are now unwilling to allow discussions in their classroom for fear of the consequences.’

School leaders need to take their courage in their hands and counteract this prevailing culture of fear, especially with the prospect of Brexit triumphing on 23rd June.

Vanessa Young and Jonathan Barnes lecture at Canterbury Christ Church University and Vanessa is Regional Co-ordinator for CPRT South East. Find out more about the activities of this very active network and its member primary schools, and how you can join in.

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Learning global

Before you’ve finished your breakfast this morning, you’ll have relied on half the world. (Martin Luther-King)

The Cambridge Primary Review Trust prioritises a rounded primary education that does not shirk the ‘everyday complexity’ of the contemporary world. In February 2016, it published the report Primary Education for Global Learning and Sustainability, which called for further work on ‘the development of a pedagogy of global and environmental social justice.’

The following are some thoughts about what ‘learning global’ looks like. It draws on insights from a project at Tide~ global learning which involves teachers from the UK, Spain, Kenya and The Gambia.

What are we trying to do?

CPRT’s February 2016 report points out that ‘learning about global and sustainability themes raises wider points regarding the purpose of education.’

Our aims will dictate the approaches that we take. Most serious commentators on the purpose of education go beyond test results to consider both individual and societal purposes. CPRT aims for ‘Self, others and the wider world’ are particularly (but not exclusively) relevant here. The following two aims deserve a careful reading:

Promoting interdependence and sustainability. To develop children’s understanding of humanity’s dependence for well-being and survival on equitable relationships between individuals, groups, communities and nations, and on a sustainable relationship with the natural world, and help children to move from understanding to positive action in order that they can make a difference and know that they have the power to do so.

Empowering local, national and global citizenship. To help children to become active citizens by encouraging their full participation in decision-making within the classroom and school, especially where their own learning is concerned, and to advance their understanding of human rights, democratic engagement, diversity, conflict resolution and social justice. To develop a sense that human interdependence and the fragility of the world order require a concept of citizenship which is global is well as local and national.

It is also worth noting that a set of outward-looking aims are also now enshrined within the globally-agreed UN Sustainable Development Goals as SDG 4.7.

What are our theories of knowledge and learning?

The next step on our pedagogical journey is to consider knowledge itself. How do we know the world?

Let’s take the issue of climate change as an example. Knowledge about it is contentious. Scientific predictions and solutions vary. We are dealing with change itself, so new knowledge is coming into being all the time. Our response therefore needs to be flexible, rather than fixed.

With an issue like this (or conflict, the refugee crisis etc) Mr Gradgrind’s ‘facts’ are only going to get us so far. If we think that human suffering, injustice and environmental devastation actually matter, we need something more.

Since climate change is already a pressing reality for millions of human beings, meaningful knowledge about it is not just a moral imperative but a growing necessity. It is not accidental that countries like Bangladesh have made it a compulsory element in their National Curriculum.

It is that wider narrative that makes all the messy information meaningful. However, a nine year old child may need specific stories to access that big picture: the polar bear stranded on an ice floe; the teenager generating renewable energy from a hamster wheel; the Maldives’ president holding an underwater press conference to draw attention to his islands’ plight; a demonstration or a summit that brings people together around a call for change. Some of those stories will want to counter potential pessimism with tales of hopeful action.

If we are to make sense of big, messy issues, then we are most likely to do so as active makers of meaning. We can start to make sense of the stories and information we encounter through investigation, comparison, experimentation, experience, dialogue, drama, debate, critical reflection, synthesis and application. To borrow from Jerome Bruner, we will mostly be using ‘narrative’ ways of understanding the world.

Learning may ultimately happen in each individual brain, but the business of effective global learning is a social activity. As CPRT’s final aim and seventh priority remind us, dialogue is paramount. Our ideas – and the values that inform them – are in play with those of other people. We make meaning together.

Rather than imagining a helpful and omniscient answer-book for big global issues, I like Edward Said’s idea of thinking ‘contrapuntally.’ He takes his metaphor from an orchestra, and how its individual instruments play distinctive lines that together make a greater whole.

In the example of climate change, these instrumental lines can be played by different subjects (Science, Geography, Citizenship etc), by accounts from contrasting parts of the world (big carbon emitters like the USA, vulnerable countries like The Gambia, rapidly-industrialising countries like India), or by the stories of people with different roles and viewpoints (the climate scientist, the fuel company employee, the Alaskan villager needing to move her home). When we put them together, we make a bigger whole, and in so doing we avoid the trap of ‘the single story.’

How do we connect action to learning?

If we are talking about global learning, challenging pessimism and fostering hope, then we are not only talking about understanding but about positive action.

I think that it is best to imagine action and learning in a dialectical relationship, where one constantly leads on to the other. Positive action, as part of a learning process, is not only informed by new knowledge, but leads on to further knowledge.

Seen this way, positive action can serve as a way into deeper learning. For example, a Year 4 class adopts a simple energy-saving measure, switching lights off in empty classrooms. This only makes sense if pupils locate what they are doing within the bigger picture of climate change and energy use. (‘We are doing this because …’)

Pupils can then subject their idea to scrutiny. Is this the best course of action, given the big picture? How much energy does it save? Where does the electricity come from? (e.g. if it is all generated from renewable sources, is it having any effect on climate change?)  Are there safety or security benefits to sometimes leaving lights on? If so, is there a way around this (e.g. installing movement sensors)? And so forth …

In this instance, positive action leads to legitimate learning, and thus to further action. All-knowing adults are not grooming children into predetermined forms of ‘behaviour change’ (where switching off the lights is always an unquestionable good), but empowering them to arrive at their own ideas about what is responsible and effective. Children are acting as agents both of their own learning and of social and environmental change.

Moreover, 2016’s solutions are unlikely to be those of 2056, so children’s growing ability to criticise, analyse and imagine plausible courses of action is not only educationally richer, but more likely to be useful and sustainable. Professor Bill Scott describes this as ‘learning as sustainability.’

Global learning lenses – a useful scaffold?

The following offers some useful pedagogical scaffolding. It comes courtesy of Tide~’s Spanish project partners at FERE-CECA in Madrid, and takes the form of four ‘global learning lenses.’ These can help us look into any global issue, for example the international food trade.

The Magnifying Glass opens up the issues, including becoming aware of hidden questions about values and the way we use language. We might start by looking at food labels, identifying where things have come from, and finding the places on the map.  Using a questioning framework like the Development Compass Rose we can investigate images of growers and producers in some of these places. We could give them thought or speech bubbles, freeze frame the images, and discuss why they are thinking or saying those things.

The 3D Glasses offer diverse perspectives. These could be subject or place perspectives, the viewpoints of different people in the production cycle. Who earns what from growing a banana?  We could debate-in-role as a banana grower, an importer and a supermarket manager. Are the processes just? Older pupils could look at an international news website and consider what people in different countries are saying about the latest trade talks.

The Microscope looks deeper and more critically into the issues. What would happen if we were to fill a lunchbox using different criteria, such as trading fairly, being environmentally friendly, healthy eating, living on a budget, tastiness?  What would go into only one box? Into all? Which would we opt for and why?  Older children might look at the way a big supermarket chain or a leading brand works. Who is involved and what are the processes?

The Telescope envisions solutions and engages us in ‘utopian thinking’. We might write or draw an imaginary classroom, school or community of the near future where all its food is provided fairly and with the environment in mind. From this, we might decide to set up a food growing project at the school, or to support a particular producer, and present our work to peers and parents. Outputs of this kind not only concentrate and focus learning, but lend it real purpose.

Like any pedagogical journey, we need to consider our aims, the kind of approaches that best suit the content (and the children) and to have some useful tools at our disposal. I look forward to hearing how readers’ global learning journeys go.

Ben Ballin works for the educational charity Tide~ global learning. He is also a consultant to the Geographical Association and Big Brum Theatre in Education.

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From pessimism to hope: global learning and sustainability

When the Cambridge Primary Review conducted its Community Soundings in 2007, it encountered a widespread sense of the world as a threatening place for children. The Review’s Final Report (p 189) explains:

We were frequently told … that the wider world is changing, rapidly and in ways which it is not always easy to comprehend, though on balance they give cause for alarm, especially in respect of climate change and environmental sustainability.

However, it then adds:

Pessimism turned to hope when witnesses felt they had the power to act. Thus, the children who were most confident that climate change need not overwhelm them were those whose schools had replaced unfocussed fear by factual information and practical strategies for energy reduction and sustainability.

I have spent a quarter of a century thinking about how primary schools can help children engage with such information, and adopt such strategies. It remains work in progress. I hope that the following will help teachers as they create their own professional repertoire.

Let us begin with pessimism.

Frightening visions of the world often impinge on children’s consciousness. Aged six in Cardiff, my  teacher told a horrified class about the nearby Aberfan disaster. Could this happen to us? My childhood nightmares revolved around nuclear war and the scene in the Sound of Music where the family crouches in terror, hiding from a Nazi search party. The nature of the challenges has mutated, but there remains much for children to be anxious about.

Spending a morning with year four children in a Worcestershire first school, I observed their efforts to make sense of some enormous numbers on the Worldometers website. As they watched the figures for births, deaths, carbon emissions and arms sales ratchet up in real time, like a demented gaming machine, the children began to decipher what they were seeing. They compared figures and applied what these meant to the real world around them. Within fifteen minutes, the children were cross-referring statistics on global literacy to what they had seen on Newsround about Malala Yousafzai.

The absolute figures for access to water and sanitation showed slow but steady progress. One child related this tellingly to population data: ‘About once every second someone else gets clean water and sanitation. But look at how many people there are: it’s not very nice.’ A nine-year-old child who can not only understand factual information, but interrogate it critically, and thereby create new knowledge, is already on a journey from pessimism to hope. That child will certainly not be easily duped by statistics, although he or she may also be in need of some wider perspectives and some practical solutions.

If we censor the world for children, in all its scariness and wonder, we can end up failing to protect them. In our quite proper desire to keep children safe, this can sometimes seem counter-intuitive. Time and again, however, surveys show that even very young children are already aware from family and the media of what is going on in the world. They will also often be very confused about it. If we delay our responses until children reach an imagined stage of developmental ‘readiness’, we merely allow fear and confusion free rein.

Many schools provide safe spaces where children can talk about what is going on in the world. This might be a daily ‘in the news’ slot, or through circle time, communities of enquiry, or within dedicated humanities, PSHE or RE time. Story can offer a powerful way in, offering as it does the protection that children are dealing with the world of fiction and the imagination.

I saw some powerful work recently from a year five class in West London, based on Pandora’s Box. The class created its own box, into which children placed what they most hated in the world. Importantly, clear ground rules had been established in advance, including the option to keep feelings private. Several families came from conflict zones, and many children related fears about violence and war. Others talked about unfair adult treatment, frightening things that they had witnessed, or deep-seated negative feelings about themselves. This activity was possible because these children had a high degree of trust in their peers and teachers, including a belief that their fears would be heard and responded to. Their own Pandora’s Box set out quite an agenda for the school, embracing curriculum (e.g. the literature, history and geography of war, conflict and refugees), wellbeing and safeguarding. Some of this had implications for the whole school and the local community. However, without the school having bravely provided a safe space for the children to reveal their ‘furies’, they might easily have remained silent and unattended in the children’s hearts and minds.

Pessimism requires a considered response. There is also cause for hope, but we may not hear so much about it. I think our highly-numerate year four child would be encouraged by these figures from the United Nations Development Programme:

  • Since 1990, the number of people living in extreme poverty has declined by more than half.
  • The proportion of undernourished people in the developing regions has fallen by almost half.
  • The primary school enrolment rate in the developing regions has reached 91 percent, and many more girls are now in school compared to 15 years ago.
  • Remarkable gains have also been made in the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
  • The under-five mortality rate has declined by more than half, and maternal mortality is down 45 percent worldwide.
  • The target of halving the proportion of people who lack access to improved sources of water was also met

(Of course, our canny child would not be alone in asking how these figures had been arrived at, what they omit, and about the use of a term like ‘the developing regions’).

In September this year, leaders from 193 countries agreed 17 Sustainable Development Goals, setting out objectives for sustainable human and environmental development for the next fifteen years. Crucially, SDG4 for ‘Quality Education’ also sets the following target:

By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.

The Cambridge Primary Review and CPRT have been ahead of the game, embracing sustainability and global citizenship as both a priority for the Trust and two explicit aims for all schools. The commitment has been implicit from the very beginning in CPR’s strapline – ‘Children, their world, their education’ – which was also was used for its final report and a 2014 seminar in which CPRT was involved, and there have been three recent CPRT blogs on this issue. The 2014 seminar also drew on pilot work carried out by the cross-European project DEEEP, considering the tricky question of how we measure progress against this UN target.

Frankly, all this may be a bit hard to digest. For me, the test is therefore what best serves the needs of particular children and their education. My instinct is to start with a question: what is happening and why does it matter? We can then move on to what different people are saying about it. It will be important to ensure that children have access to a good range of varied perspectives: this is one place where the specialists can help. From there, children can move on to the ways forward that might be available (there should usually be more than one, even at key stage 1). There may then be appropriate action that children can take: themselves, through others, often both.

From a pedagogical point of view, one of the great things about big global issues is that they may appear abstract, but they are actually very concrete. This means that children are engaging with real questions in real time, and this can lend a clear purpose to their enquiries, their talk, their writing. Moreover, because we are dealing with the real world, we are necessarily engaging with its glorious messiness. The world is perennially changing, what people say about it is contested, and our knowledge of it is constantly being updated. Such global knowledge is enormously rich: there is no answer-book for the big questions that face us in the real world.

This also means that we are to some extent necessarily co-learners. Indeed, it has been argued that human and sustainable development is itself a learning process, in which case we are all de facto participants on a shared learning journey. This can be challenging, but it can also be liberating for both teacher and pupils.

To put this into sharper focus, let us imagine that a year six class is learning about the forthcoming climate change summit in Paris. Yet again, world leaders are going to determine what is to be done about our collective futures. By borrowing an enquiry process that Tide~ has used in the past, we could ask:

  1. What is climate change? There is some solid science here, including the opportunity to take weather measurements, look at leaf-fall and bud-burst. Children could examine what so-called ‘climate sceptics’ have to say, and where the balance of evidence presently resides.
  2. Why does it matter? This allows children to move into geography, and the differential impacts of climate events on, say, the UK, the Sahel and small island states. They could use a ‘mystery’ to explore complex chains of cause and effect across the globe. They could follow online news reports about what people are saying in different places in the lead-up to the Paris summit.
  3. What can we do about it? This includes geography and science. Children could look at technical solutions in design technology, personal action and morality in PSHE and RE, the decision-making processes at Paris. They might write persuasive texts to send to local delegates to Paris. For a whole school response, a scheme such as Eco Schools would come into its own.
  4. What have we learned and how? This is a chance for children to share their learning with others, and with a purpose in so doing. For example, they could create an assembly, a film, a blog or news bulletin for their peers and the community, thereby meeting an ‘extended writing’ brief for National Curriculum 2014. In reviewing the ways they have learned about this issue, they may well devise further questions for the future. This is about empowering children not only as learners, but also as confident citizens.

There is a great deal of material for those wanting to go deeper into the pedagogy and ethics of global learning and sustainability. Elaine Miskell has produced a succinct document on some common pitfalls, and how they can be overcome. Teachers at Tide~ have produced a discussion paper on teaching about climate change as a focus for staff meetings. Thinkers like Vanessa Andreotti have written compellingly about how to challenge development stereotypes.

Eventually, the choice of what to do comes down to the individual teacher, the circumstances and opportunities that exist in her or his school, classroom and community, with specific children in mind. When I think about the many children I meet, like that year four child in Worcestershire, the fears that they share, the tricky questions that they ask, and the potential solutions they undertake, my own anxieties about the world start to feel more hopeful. If children can become agents of their own learning, authors of their own future and makers of sustainable change, those ‘darker visions’ of the world look a little bit brighter.

Ben Ballin works for the educational charity Tide~ global learning. He is also a consultant to the Geographical Association and Big Brum Theatre in Education. The example from Worcestershire  previously appeared in the article ‘The World in Numbers’ in Primary Geography 33.

The ‘darker visions’ in Ben’s final paragraph is a reference to the scene-setting in the Cambridge Primary Review final report and a reminder of why the Review and the Trust are committed to equity, global understanding and sustainability. The report said (p 15): ‘This is the era of globalisation, and perhaps of unprecedented opportunity. But there are darker visions. The gap between the world’s rich and poor continues to grow. There is political and religious polarisation. Many people are daily denied their basic human rights and suffer violence and oppression. As if that were not enough, escalating climate change may well make this the make-or-break century for humanity as a whole. Such scenarios raise obvious and urgent questions for public education.’

Contact

Cambridge Primary Review Trust - Email: administrator@cprtrust.org.uk