Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have a number of concerns about this Bill. I always worry about using the school curriculum for political ends. We are increasingly seeing the challenge of educating children being subordinated to the imperatives of social engineering and political expediencies.

As a former teacher and someone who works with many educators through my role at the Academy of Ideas, I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and many other voices recognise how frustrating it is when the answer to unresolved social and political issues of the day is always: sort them out in schools—the curriculum can be used to change attitudes and behaviour. It turns the curriculum into a battleground for different messages and causes.

This Bill is about the environment, but it could just as easily be about decolonisation, gender identity or Islamophobia—think of any number of fashionable causes—and there is always a sense of urgency that teachers should sort it out. No matter how you look at it, it distracts from the crucial role of handing over the wondrous wealth of knowledge from millennia to new generations. It becomes further squeezed. It is not as though there is not more to pass on; if there is more time in the curriculum, I would say that, to make good citizens, we should use it to introduce students to the wonders of more literature, novels and history—all the cultural capital they will need to equip them to approach political issues as independent thinkers.

This brings me to the thorny issue of impartiality. This Bill—the noble Lord, Lord Knight, has made his motivation clear—promotes a particular view of the relationship between humans and the environment. For example, it urges that pupils must learn to protect and restore. It has a particular eco-outlook that may well clash with other priorities, such as building, industrialisation and development. It also narrowly defines what makes a good citizen; surely, these matters should be open to query and contestation.

Two decades ago, I set up Debating Matters, a sixth-form debating competition that prioritises substance over style. While I am not now involved, the competition thrives. It aims to show teenagers that there are always two sides to every issue; that they must read around and research all sides of the argument and learn to think for themselves. I worry that this Bill is just one side of the argument.

No doubt, the effects of climate change present serious challenges to society, and I am all for urging pupils to study subjects that could help manage and mitigate those problems—we need more engineers, marine biologists, flood technologists and so on—but the skills advocated here seem to be about creating green activists and agents of behaviour change. In the Library briefing, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is quoted as calling pupils

“significant influencers on their parents and grandparents.”

Is it not cynical for politicians to use children to avoid persuading adult citizens of the merits or demerits of net-zero policies? This sounds anti-democratic to me. Indeed, the noble Lord goes on to say:

“Many children are leaving school not connecting that knowledge with the action they can take. This must change if schools are to reflect the future we want.”


Who is the “we” there? Is there a state-endorsed future I do not know about? I am not sure I would agree with that of the noble Lord, Lord Knight. What action does the noble Lord want people to take? Extinction Rebellion? An army of Greta Thunbergs?

I think all those issues should be debated in schools, I just do not think they should be enshrined in legislation as self-evident simplistic truths, ennobled here by almost everyone as no-brainers.