‘The Golden Rule: Treat others and the planet as you would wish to be treated.’ An exciting much-needed new way to bring global learning and compassion for our planet into your classrooms has launched.
In the current context of the climate and ecological crisis we’re facing, it’s clear we are in the middle of an educational emergency. As Prince William said when he announced The Earthshot Prize last year “The Earth is at a tipping point and we face a stark choice: either we continue as we are and irreparably damage our planet, or we remember our unique power as human beings and our continual ability to lead, innovate and problem-solve”.
The Earthshot Prize is the most ambitious and prestigious of its kind – designed to incentivise change and help to repair our planet over the next ten years. The Prize is backed by The Earthshot Prize Council - a global team of influential individuals including Prince William, Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Sir David Attenborough, Shakira Mebarak and Christiana Figueres - and the first ever Earthshot Prize winners will be announced in London on October 17th in a global TV broadcast.
As a teacher you can help young people respond to the challenges set out by The Earthshot Prize by helping nurture your students’ creative problem-solving skills. To help, we’ve made Generation Earthshot.
Generation Earthshot helps young people to recognise the role they play as citizens of the global community; it has been created to inspire students everywhere to develop big ideas to tackle our shared environmental challenges.
Children and young people are aware of the urgency of our environmental challenges but can become overwhelmed. According to a survey of 10,000 16-26 year olds across 10 countries, 59% of respondents were very or extremely worried and 84% at least moderately worried about climate change. Over 50% felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty.
Through Generation Earthshot, we want to inspire optimism that we can overcome these great challenges. The teacher toolkit takes its lead from the principles of design thinking, simplified so that they can be applied throughout different areas of the curriculum, from science and humanities to arts. It focuses on creative problem solving and ideation to give students the confidence to come up with ideas for an increasingly compassionate and sustainable future.
Generation Earthshot is not currently a competition, but we’d love to see your students’ ideas. You can submit them via the Generation Earthshot website to receive a certificate and there will be opportunities for student ideas to be showcased alongside others from around the world.
As one of the world’s most popular educationalists, the late Sir Ken Robinson, said: “We’re all born with immense, natural, creative abilities. Children demonstrate them all. We all feel them. But we feel they slip away from us as we get older.”
Through education, we can change that.
