Is This Really The Way To Set An Example To Children?

[youngmafbog]

Damned irresponsible if you ask me, regardless of the topic

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687889/Fury-headteachers-union-BACKS-pupil-strike-week-protest-climate-change.html

[ToraToraTora]

hey, twoPee, you've picked up my stalker! well done me old china!

[retrocop]

No officer. I am not truanting and you an'tsend me back to school. I know my rights and today I have self identified as a climate change protester.
That's the way to sow civil disobedience.

[Calicogirl]

Good not enough civil disobedience. Nothing ever changed for the better waiting for the establishment to decide to do it itself.

[naomi24]

Protest, yes, by all means, but Civil disobedience is not something that children should be taught is an acceptable way to achieve their aims.

I actually think this is highly irresponsible. If these idiots encouraged a child of mine to walk out of school I’d be furious. Parents need to know exactly where their children are. This is a lefty initiative organised by lefty loonies – and they should be ashamed of themselves.

[andy-hughes]

Muntin - // Good for them, the students are behaving in a very responsible way.
Trying to take responsibility for their own futures. //

I think the exact opposite.

As a pupil, placing yourself outside the safety of school in school time with no supervision is the height of irresponsibility, causing worry to parents who have no way of knowing where their children are, or if they are safe or not.

As for taking responsibility for their own futures, they are school children - they have no responsibility!

If anyone wants to educate children about the concept of responsibility, what it means, how important it is, and how to exercise it when you actually have it in real terms, then school is a good place to begin.

The idea that children are being 'responsible' by opting out of their education in some imagined and facile 'support' of a dubious scientific hobby horse is to delude them even further about what responsibility actually means in the real world.

[Spicerack]

I hope it's freezing.

[jim360]

It would, I suspect, be far easier to sympathise with the children if you weren't so scientifically illiterate, eh, AH?

[youngmafbog]

Ah the supercilious sneering from jim as per usual I see.

[Cloverjo]

They’re not being taught to strike.

According to the link, ONE person in the Association of Headmasters [or whatever it was, I don’t want to go back to the DM site to check] said good on them. And so do I.

I wonder if it might make Donald Trump think there’s something in this climate change malarkey after all. Doubt it, but...

[Cloverjo]

//dubious scientific hobby horse//
Blimey, Andy. I might have thought you were Donald Trump if you couldn’t spell and articulate so well.

[naomi24]

Cloverjo, if they’re not being taught to strike what are they being taught? This isn’t about climate change – which I agree with AH is a dubious scientific hobby horse. It’s about cultivating the young as future left-wing voters.

Jim, your arrogance is showing again.

[Kromovaracun]

I am glad that they are taking the issue seriously, and that they seem to understand it. But it's wrong for head teachers to be encouraging this walk-out. Kids need to be in school. A sensible alternative would have been some kind of event in-school dedicated to studying climate change.

[JF85]

I usually think of a strike as the withdrawal of paid labour. In the school context, that would only apply to teachers. I suspect what the students intend is closer to a boycott, in that they will temporarily not accept what they are being offered. My earlier thought remains, however. Children can easily catch up the loss of a few hours' classroom time, but the learning opportunities afforded by this particular action would be extensive, immersive and possibly beneficial to future generations. I doubt it will have much impact on President Trump, however, since he believes the death of unprecedented numbers of children who are actually in school is a worthwhile price to pay to retain his post.

[Peter Pedant]

// hey, twoPee, you've picked up my stalker! well done me old china!//

umm - yeah - righto!

[steg]

naomi24 ////maggiebee, //Nothing new in pupils demonstrating, earliest I can remember is in the 70s, but sure it happened before that too. //

Firstly, do you mean schoolchildren - or university students? Secondly, demonstrating and striking are two different things entirely.////

There was schoolchildren strikes as far back as 1911
https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/the-1911-schoolchildren-strikes/
1971
http://spitalfieldslife.com/2011/08/16/the-stepney-school-strike-of-1971/
1972
https://flashbak.com/1972-schools-out-in-london-for-steve-ginger-finch-and-the-schools-action-union-strike-12664/
And quite a few others

[jim360]

On matters scientific I've earned the right to claim that I know what I am talking about far better than Andy. I'm also not going to have patience with people who should know better than to ignore the opinions, research, and value of experts. Why should I? It's all out there, for those who would care to take a look -- and who would care to accept that maybe, just maybe, a proper scientific education counts for something in matters scientific.

[jim360]

And I've done the patience, I've done the explanations, too. Adults who continue to ignore that which is staring them in the face only deserve so much patience and respect, and people who describe the well-founded and well-researched Science of Climate Change as "a pseudoscientific hobby horse", with no kind of background to make that evaluation, have exhausted it.

[Calicogirl]

^^^ Mic Drop jim ;-) ^^

[andy-hughes]

jim360 - // It would, I suspect, be far easier to sympathise with the children if you weren't so scientifically illiterate, eh, AH? //

My 'scientific literacy' is not the subject of debate here, and its inclusion or exclusion does nothing to further the question being debated, which is about the rights and wrongs of children protesting in this way - not the subject about which they protesting.

[jim360]

Then don't go around calling climate change a "dubious scientific hobby horse". I'm happy to debate the general merits of children going on strike, but it will be far easier to do that if there is at least some common ground. If you don't even accept, as you clearly should, that there is even an issue worth protesting about then of course you wouldn't want to see students walking out of school over it, independent of any general principle.