Today’s news is filled with the heatwave. Fifteen kids needed to be rescued, hiking in Maryland; and two were hospitalized. Here in Pennsylvania, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is warning residents not to leave their pets out in the sun, and to walk dogs in the shade. Already this year, 28 dog deaths have been reported due to heat. Recent studies warn that, because of climate change, heatwaves will “drastically worse in the Northern Hemisphere.” Between 1998 and 2017, there were 160,000 heat-related deaths globally. The scientists suggest that record-breaking heat events are up to 7 times more likely to occur between 2021 to 2050.
How does this relate to what we do as educators? In 2019 Raffi wrote the song “Young People Marching” inspired by the work of Greta Thunberg:
Decades of lies, decades of denial\ Turned up the heat, engulfed us in fire\ Decades of obstruction, though people knew better\ Caused this climate emergency, now we gotta set ourselves free\ Of this climate emergency—climate emergency
“Engulfed in fire,” we recognize our responsibilities as music educators every bit as much as young people like Greta and professional musicians like Raffi. Unbound, for the most part, from the curricular dictates of distant global corporate interests and governments, we set our classroom’s direction in a way many Reading and Math teachers cannot. We aren't required to teach to a script. We don’t have to prepare children for weekly bubble tests; or to narrow possible futures to multiple-guess.
We teach music, and music is part of everything. Music education in schools is ecological if we allow it to be. If we take off our blinders.
More in this blog:
See Post 27: The American Politics of Climate Change
And also Post 53: An Intersectional Approach to Climate Justice