From Academia to Response-Ability

Abstract

The need to tackle climate change through both mitigation and adaptation is increasingly urgent with all nations and all sectors of society needing to respond. Given this state of affairs social action is important not only to raise awareness but to stimulate appropriate responses to the climate crisis. As a consequence, social action programmes in schools have been a crucial part of learning about climate change as they provide political and practical engagement. This paper explores the experience of the Manchester Environmental Education Network (MEEN), a small UK charity that runs a social action project with schools focusing on the facilitation of inter-generational activities around climate change. Presenting three vignettes, written by myself as the MEEN coordinator, the aim is to examine the Carbon Classroom programme and discuss the ethical value of these intergenerational interactions. Rather than working with the idea of responsibility, which focuses on duty and accountability, this paper will explore climate change education through the notion of response-ability (Haraway 2016) with the aim of cultivating an ethical and open approach where responses are mutually engaging. Thus, by drawing on Barad’s theory of agential realism, the vignettes will highlight instances where enactments of response-ability occur. The conclusion will discuss the recent rise in young people engaging in activism on climate change, such as the Fridays for Future, Youth4Climate and the Extinction Rebellion movements, and question, in the light of these events, how the role of climate change educators need to be reconfigured to become more response-able.