Panelists Discuss Educating Children on Climate Change at Harvard Ed School Talk

Environmental activists discussed strategies for talking about climate change with children at a Harvard Graduate School of Education webinar Wednesday.

The event was a part of the school’s Education Now webinar series, which aims to address the evolving state of education in the United States following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Wednesday’s panel was moderated by HGSE lecturer Laura A. Schifter, who leads the Aspen Institute’s “This Is Planet Ed” initiative.

Schifter began the panel by citing an October 2022 survey by the Aspen Institute that found 49 percent of caregivers reported having a conversation about climate change with their children.

“Right now, there’s a big gap,” Schifter said, noting that 82 percent of respondents in the same survey said they feel children and young people will be “essential” to confronting climate change.

Journalist Anya Kamenetz, an adviser to the Aspen Institute initiative, said during the panel that adults may be hesitant to discuss climate change with their children due to a generational disconnect.

“Older people, for all the right reasons, feel more responsibility to address climate change than younger people do, and yet it’s younger people who are going to be experiencing it,” Kamenetz said.

Panelist Azucena “Zuzu” Qadeer, a junior at Beacon High School in New York City and an organizer with TREEage, a youth group that aims to address the climate crisis, discussed her own motivations for getting involved in climate activism as a young person.

“I think it’s a fact that climate change disproportionately affects people of color, and so I’ve seen how it’s affected people in my community, and it’s really motivated me to do the work, especially because I’m the next generation,” Qadeer said.

Qadeer said she approaches climate activism with a positive outlook, though others may look at the climate crisis in a pessimistic way.

“A lot of it is really horrible, a lot of it is really scary, but there’s a lot of good things about it. There’s a lot of hope, and there’s a lot of action that we can take to create more hope,” Qadeer said.

Kamenetz said difficult conversations about climate change are needed to confront the issue.

“I’ve come to realize that it’s not so much that we need to figure out a way to make it not scary — it’s that we need to figure out a way to have a brave conversation,” Kamenetz said. “Because the facts of climate change are quite scary, and the implications of it are scary.”

Kamenetz said caregivers should use basic language and positive examples of coping methods when discussing climate change with young children.

“With a very young child, it is enough to deliver the basic realities,” Kamenetz said. “You’re never going to talk about climate change with kids without talking about, ‘Millions of people are helping. Millions of people are trying to make a difference.’”

Kamenetz also discussed several metaphors that are useful for discussions about climate change with young children, such as a “heat-trapping blanket” covering the earth and the idea of the earth coming down with a fever.

Schifter ended the panel by encouraging attendees to take action against climate change.

“Ultimately, the way to lead us all to solutions is to start opening up dialogue about why we should all care and how we can all contribute to solutions locally,” Schifter said.

—Staff writer Azusa M. Lippit can be reached at azusa.lippit@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @azusalippit.