With the impending threat of climate change, South Africa has built the groundwork for climate teaching in schools, but there are highlighted areas for improvement.
“Climate education in South Africa is supported by numerous structures. Cindy-Lee Cloete, head of programme and projects for Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA), stated on Friday that the Department of Basic Education and its partners had done a huge amount of effort to lay the groundwork for climate education in South Africa.
She was speaking during a webinar about children’s participation in climate change action.
Among the identified areas for development, according to Cloete, is the need for a new approach to education.
“If we are to fully commit ourselves to advocating and defending our communities against the effects of climate change, we must adopt a different educational strategy.
“”We must examine ways to bring children’s and youth’s voices into places that are not associated with tokenism and engage them meaningfully so that their voices are heard,” added Cloete.
She commended the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) recent announcement of the Strategic Framework on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), which incorporates environmental education.
SADC, which consists of Angola, Botswana, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, the United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, has agreed to integrate the framework into the education of schoolchildren.
Cloete stated that the nation’s education should focus on advocacy and action, as these areas would be significant for the youth as they transition towards a just and sustainable world.
Only 53% of countries had climate change teaching in their national school curricula, and 70% of students were unable to understand climate change, according to UNESCO data.
Globally, school education is conducted through the passive transfer of knowledge, according to UNESCO.
However, education must “implement active strategies that develop advocacy and agency,” according to Cloete.
“In order for climate education to be effective in the United States, we must examine how we [create] agency and empathy throughout the learning process, particularly through climate education.”
As a focus for climate education and inclusion, environmental justice, social justice, and economic justice must also be considered.
Nobody should be left behind. Climate education must be a lifelong endeavor for youngsters in Early Childhood Development (ECD) centers and the elderly alike. “We must incorporate them to protect the ecology,” explained Cloete.
WESSA collaborates with around 700 schools in South Africa to provide climate change messaging in and out of the classroom.
“We aim to create a movement of people who care about themselves and the planet, and we do that through citizen action, which includes messaging and advocacy,” said Cloete.
Director for Social Cohesion and Equity in Education at the Department of Basic Education, Likho Bottoman, stated that climate change topics have been incorporated into the curriculum, despite the fact that the department has been criticized for its insufficient preparation of teachers.
“Occasionally, teachers lack teaching aids, and topic gaps have been detected because teachers lack teaching aids to impart content to students.
We have now prepared Life Orientation textbooks with a part devoted to climate change, and we expect that these textbooks will be finalized and adopted by schools by 2023.
Bottoman stated, “In the future, the department will need to consider measures to support the curriculum, such as creating manuals or scripted lesson plans that are consistent with the Life Orientation textbook and the National Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) paper.”
On climate education, he lauded the efforts of partners with whom the agency has engaged.
“We are working with our partners in civil society, business, and other government institutions on climate education because we recognize that if we miss the opportunity to educate students about climate change at the K-12 level, we may be contributing to the issue of climate change.
As far as climate change reaction mechanisms are concerned, we are well behind where we should be. We must catch up, become more efficient, effective, and economical in our reactions and mechanisms to climate change challenges. We require all stakeholders and partners to pool their resources in this area,” stated Bottoman.