They Just Won’t Leave the Kids Alone
Posted on 21 Dec 24
by Tony Thomas
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Melbourne University, sometimes billed as the Parkville Asylum, is ranked by The Times as top in Australia and 39th worldwide. I’m sure a peer-reviewed paper last March from its Disasters, Climate and Adversity Unit made a small contribution to this on-campus glory. The study is Growing up in Victoria, Australia, in themidst of the climate emergency.[1] In this paper the all-female cohort of authors describe how they are turning schoolkids from the age of 12 into “Climate Superpowers” — shock troops, in other words, for the green blob — “developing themselves as agents of change”.
The program resonates with me. I recall my days as a Young Pioneer in Perth in the 1950s. I was proud of my uniform of white shirt and red scarf, and our repertoire of songs from the German Democratic Republic under Wilhelm Pieck. We’d bunch together in a commuter bus to Fremantle and sing the “Bau auf!” song:
Build up, build up, free German youth, build up. Build for a happy future, build for a happy life!
To condition kids as green rather than red thinkers, the Parkville authors have created a roadmap in the form of an online climate quiz. It’s illustrated with green and pink climate-fighting hobgoblins with light-bulbs sprouting from their heads.
I wouldn’t mind being a Climate Superpower so I took the quiz in my “young person” persona, while chewing my pencil and side-glancing at cat videos on TikTok. Each question has a set of multiple choices– none are “wrong”, I must just prioritise them. A sample:
https://cliscep.com/2024/12/21/they-just-wont-leave-the-kids-alone/
