The role of school history in helping young people to navigate their future at a time of climate crisis

Abstract

The need to prepare school students to respond to the climate and environmental crises is rapidly rising up educational agendas nationally and internationally, but the role of the humanities, and particularly history, is often marginalised. In England, the main context of this article, the climate crisis does not appear on any official history curriculum documentation, reinforcing a separation of nature and culture. This is not surprising, given that the climate crisis in general has been engaged with so little in the humanities, but teaching climate change as a ‘science’ problem rather than a societal one risks exacerbating students’ anxieties and sense of powerlessness. By contrast, humanities subjects, including history, can furnish students with the knowledge and skills to respond in more constructive and critical ways to a crisis that they will experience more acutely than us. We acknowledge and welcome the work that is already underway in school history, but we also call for a greater urgency to reform history curricula and provide better support for teachers. Meanwhile, mindful of how painfully slow these processes can be, we also call on history educators and academics to take matters into their own hands and make changes within existing curriculum structures where possible.