Our article addresses the role of school history in helping young people to navigate their future at a time of climate crisis. As we know, global heating, biodiversity collapse and environmental pollution are already affecting daily life everywhere, including in the UK. Their impacts will only intensify in the coming decades. One consequence of the failure of adults to act on the warnings of scientists is anxiety, disengagement and poor mental health among our children. Younger generations will face exceptional challenges in their lifetimes. They deserve to have an education that equips them properly. Recognizing this unmet need, many students are asking for better ‘climate education’, demanding that schools ‘teach the future’.

In our article, we set out why we think History is a good place for doing this and make a series of suggestions for how to do it in the classroom. These include easy interventions that build on existing topics to open up new ideas for students without requiring a large investment of time or a high level of confidence from teachers. We also set out possibilities for more substantive curriculum changes.

We argue that it is crucial for young people to develop a robust historical understanding of the causes of today’s crises as well as of the environmental impacts of different ways of living. This could mean looking back into the deep past to see how humans developed extractive relationships with their environment. Students could reassess the fall of the Roman Empire in the light of new research showing that reduced demand for metals and grain actually meant cleaner air and reforestation of lands cleared for intensive agriculture. It might mean approaching the industrial revolution differently, reflecting on the choices to enter into fossil fuel dependency and create economies based on mass production and consumption. It could mean redefining ‘great’ individuals to include environmentalists, and putting indigenous peoples’ thought and practice about how to live in a biodiverse world into the mix with more conventional study of scientific and technological ‘advances’.

Students also need to be equipped with the critical skills to assess information, misinformation and to think about proposed solutions from different angles. By looking at examples of how past societies addressed environmental crises, students can develop a greater sense of how personal and community agency shapes outcomes for societies. This could help them to avoid the determinist pessimism that comes from reading scientific projection as ‘locked in’ social futures. Perhaps above all, children need the opportunity to build the optimism, ambition and humanity that will be essential for turning things around and making liveable futures.

The role of school history in helping young people to navigate their future at a time of climate crisis by Amanda Power (University of Oxford, UK) and Alison Kitson (UCL Institute of Education, UK) is published in History Education Research Journal, volume 21.

environment humanities school history teachers curriculum climate crisis