Dear Rethinking Schools Teach Climate Justice friends,
What a time. This is a brief installment to alert you to a couple of new articles. Thanks for your important work at this perilous moment.
– Bill Bigelow and Mimi Eisen
Why We Need to Teach the History of the Environmental Justice Movement
The current issue of Rethinking Schools magazine features environmental justice articles that we want to make sure you know about.
- In the current winter 2024–2025 issue, we include Tim Swinehart’s “Why We Need to Teach the History of the Environmental Justice Movement.” Tim laments the conventional version of environmentalism that still shows up in textbooks and curricula. Listen to Robert Redford in the film A Fierce Green Fire: “The environmental movement is about nature versus humanity.” Tim introduces students to the Principles of Environmental Justice, which insist that there is no contradiction between caring for nature and for vulnerable communities. These principles grew out of the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. Tim highlights one of the conference organizers, Dana Alston:
For us, the issues of the environment do not stand alone by themselves. They are not narrowly defined. Our vision of the environment is woven into an overall framework of social, racial, and economic justice. It is deeply rooted in our cultures and our spirituality. It is based in a long tradition and understanding and respect for the natural world. The environment, for us, is where we live, where we work, and where we play.
Tim offers a compelling portrait of what can happen when we teach a people’s history of the environmental justice movement.
Teaching for Climate Justice: Bill Bigelow’s Top 10 List
In Bill’s “Teaching for Climate Justice: My Top 10 List,” in the winter issue of Rethinking Schools, he notes that using the term “climate justice” has become something of a cliché. So it is helpful giving some thought to what it is — and is not. Here, below, is his list of what constitutes climate justice teaching.
- We must teach the climate crisis not as a product of greed, bad corporations, or overconsumption, but of the capitalist system itself.
- Central to climate justice teaching is equipping students to understand environmental racism.
- A climate justice curriculum focuses on the historic roots of the crisis in colonialism, slavery, extractivism.
- Climate justice takes an internationalist approach.
- A climate justice curriculum critiques individualism as a solution to climate chaos.
- Instead, students learn that meaningful social change is the product of social movements.
- Climate justice teaching reaches beyond the immediate causes and consequences of climate change.
- A climate justice curriculum is problem-posing, participatory, playful, critical.
- Climate justice teaching happens in all disciplines, not just in science classes.
- To be a climate justice educator is to be an activist educator.
See Bill’s article, which fleshes these out a bit. What is on your list of what it means to teach for climate justice?