Section 12 of the Paris Agreement, ratified after the COP21 (2015), requires the parties who signed the agreement to organize an appropriate education for all schoolchildren. Last spring, a petition signed by leading climatologists, questioned seriously the situation in France. The first report issued by the High Comitee for the Climate emphasized that « we must integrate systematically in the educational systems our knowledge about climate change, greenhouse gas emissions and basic carbon activity. ».

Sans doute sensible à la mobilisation de la jeunesse comme à celle des scientifiques, le ministère de l’Éducation nationale a tardivement pris conscsystematically ience de la nécessité d’agir, nécessité d’autant plus impérieuse que tout changement au sein du système éducatif prend du temps.

Last June, the Minister required the Higher Council for programs - which includes in particular members of parliament and senators - to include in schools, high schools and primary schools "information as explicit and as complete as possible to be integrated gradually... on climate change, on biodiversity and on stable development, within all disciplines … based on scienc e ».

This is a huge programme, which will hopefully become a concrete reality starting with the 2020 school year.

Factual ignorance and scientific consensus

In fact, time is moving on. Many reports, from both parents and teachers, highlight the confusion, even the anguish, of young children and even of adolescents, lacking any kind of information, while waiting for the planet to destroy itself, for a new mass extinction, while all the human race in danger disappears.

And so to the adolescents, wondering about their future careers. Are the eco-worries, spread by the social networks, the new illness ? In Europe, in the U.S.A., in Australia, scientists have analyzed in detail, in youngsters ranging from 12 to 25 years old, how climatic questions impact on value judgements and on considerations of the future.

It turns out that there is deep ignorance of the facts and of the scientific consensus , profound confusion between adaptation and attenuation : but there is also a special place given to cetain « messengers » which these youngsters consider to be reliable : pride of place among these are their teachers.

To-day, even though all of our schoolchildren know that « the Earth is warming up », we have only explained to a very few the phenomena involved and the associated orders of magnitude.

A careful analysis of the current school and high school programs in France, to which all the children are exposed, shows that with one or two rare exceptions in primary school, climatic information makes only a very rare appearance, and that only from the 6th class only. During the three following years, they appear only here and there, in geography, in the life sciences and in the science of the Earth (SVT) in a somewhat disordered, even impressionistic, way.

It is quite understandable that the way will be hard. We have to furnish the schoolchildren with a carefully thought out framework, which will enable them to have a global, though straightforward, view of the terrestrial system (continents, ocean, atmosphere, ices, biosphere and their mutual interactions), of the possible risks and the solutions which can still be applied, either by adaptation or by attenuation. We must also emphasize the indispensable global solidarity and the necessity for climatic justice. One must also emphasize that science analyzes facts and strategies, evaluates probabilities, sketches possible scenarios for the future, but that it does not impose choices which depend on the values and democratic freedom.

An indispensable systemic view

In high school, the fragmentation of the disciplines taught acts against this indispensable systemic view. Only a concerted effort, a discourse imposed by the program and the same for all, will enable the child to understand the coherence of climatic science and to appreciate the possibilities. In primary school, where a single teacher handles all the disciplines, this work is easier.

For all these young children, aged between 6 and 16 years, it is essential to furnish a structured, rational framework for though and to suggest, via projects and an active pedagogy of the type « La main à la pâte », activities which, be they ever so modest, act within their immediate environment and make sense – as for example estimating the carbon balance of everyone, of the family, of the school, of the region. Via « La main à la pâte », the creation in 2018 in Paris of the Office for Climate Education aims to help teachers with appropriate high quality toolss, as emphasized by the successive GIEC reports.

At high school, the maturity of the children will enable one to deepen the knowledge, thus leading to the next citizenship exercise. The reform of the general lycée took place recently. The 2nd class remains unchanged and the terrestrial climate is hardly taught. In the 1st and final class (for 2020), the old sections S, ES and L have been eliminated, and replaced by a common unit for all the chldren (i.e. almost 350 000 ear level) accompanied by a menu « à la carte » of specialities chosen by each child.

In the common branch, the word « climate » is absent from both geography and moral and civil teaching (enseignement moral et civique - EMC),as well as from philosophy. « the environment », a very general notion, sometimes a stop gap in various contexts, is mentioned once or twice in EMC and in geography. The real inovation can be found in interdisciplinary teaching, two hours per week. The terrestrial climate, the current climatic heating and its impact, energy consumption and the ecological transition can be found there, although occupying a somewhat modest place (hardly 20 % in the 1st level, about 50 % in the last class).

Here, a systemic view is really proposed, illustrated by each of the sciences : physics, chemistry, life sciences and terrestrial science, mathematics. The future will show whether science teachers know overall how to present this view, by associating economists, geographers and philosophers to their courses. And the future will show also whether there is sufficient room, for an active pedagogy including projects and experiments.

Only a small fraction of schoolchildren (at most on the order of a quarter), having chosen en 2020 the speciality « Life and Earth Sciences » in the final class, will benefit from a much more solid teaching, though cut off from physics-chemistry, which limits itself to "talk about" the climate in the context of energy. Finally, the speciality "economy" introduces a small place for the consequences of climatic change.

The reform of the professional lycée, currently in process, does not include at present any course related to climatic change, nor do the technological sections of the general lycée. Is it not profoundly unjust that, in view of this planetary-wide phenomenaon, a good third of the youngsters of each age group, often moreover lacking somewhat more than the children from the lycées, should be lacking the tools needed for understanding what is going on ?

To conclude, a vigorous action is needed at school and high school. In the schools, the new programmes could suffice to furnish a solid basis for a fraction of the yougnsters, providing that within each establishment a collective effort of the teachers, including most of the disciplines, ensures that the information is coherent. Much remains to be done in the technological and expecially professional sectors. Everywhere the current generalization of eco-delegates furnishes perhaps a path to follow ?
The 5 missions of the eco-delegate. (Éducation France, 2019).