A consultation conducted in recent months with 1,580 young people indicates that the majority of them are worried about the impact of climate change and are calling for more time devoted in class to environmental issues, “a critical problem that does not receive enough attention or education”. With these findings in hand, a committee asked to meet with the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, to change things.
“You can see that young people are really anxious about this in general — and many told us they were sad, worried, and afraid for the future,” reports Marie Maltais, a Secondary V student at Mont-Saint- Sacrament, in Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier.
In an open letter addressed to the Minister, the Environmental Issues Education Committee (E3), founded a year ago and made up of students, teachers and the Association for the Teaching of Science and technology in Quebec (AESTQ), calls in particular for a revision of the science and technology program to update the content on environmental issues and make this type of subject prescriptive from preschool.
A form with questions has been circulated in several schools across the province in recent months to take the pulse, and it was mainly high school students who responded, with 1,340 participants.
Some 59.6% of them would like to be better informed at school about the environment, ecology and climate change – and 72% say they are worried. In primary school, where the questionnaire was distributed to pupils in 5e and 6e years, 70.3% of young people want these questions to take up more space in the classroom. “It’s still a lot of young people who think that it’s not enough education” in this area, says Marie Maltais.
Another data worries the committee: in elementary school, 30.4% of students revealed that they did not know what climate change is. “In a small face-to-face meeting with elementary school students, a young person told us that, for him, climate change is when he turns up and down the heating in his house,” explains Marie Maltais, who concludes a large gap between the perceptions of the pupils.
The open responses collected using the form speak for themselves. The tone is dark, and many worry about the impact of environmental problems on themselves, their loved ones and future generations. A student in secondary one has “sorry for the Earth” and says she is “furious with humans” and another in secondary two does not want “to see animals disappear”. “I love nature very much and I’m afraid I won’t be able to enjoy it when I’m older,” writes a fifth-grade student. “I think it is urgent to do something to reduce it [changement climatique] and I have the impression that everyone says that to each other, but that no one really does it,” believes a fourth-grade student.
Last December, the Ministry of Education told the Duty that work to update the general education programs was in progress, with the aim of standardizing them, and that a consultation had been carried out.
“The ministry’s constant reflection also makes it possible to reflect on the science program in general education for young people,” we wrote. The department is aware that its program addresses issues that have become more topical than when the program was established in a less sustained manner. »