By: Aussie Sue

Aussie Sue
Wed, 05 Feb 2025 19:33:27 +0000

In reply to IanCad.

I was an English teacher in a comprehensive high school in a former life (which now seems light years ago). There were 5 to 6 English classes, streamed, in each year. Out of those the top one and a half were probably some kind of university material, the bottom one and a half would struggle with stable employment and the remaining 2 or 3 in the middle tiers would do the rest; office work, retail, teaching aids, dental/vet nurses, small business, trades – some of these where good, stable incomes are to be found, actually!!

Those middle tier kids were generally happiest, more trustworthy and likely to succeed. I cannot imagine these kids stressing about climate change, whereas the top kids (many had no sense of humour) would angst about any and all things. The kids at the bottom; okay some would go into manual jobs, but there was plenty of despair to be found there already. I’m sure the climate lunatics have a ready market with these kids – if the latter actually cared about anything!

Many of my ‘lessons’ with them were teaching basic life skills, interview techniques and good manners. I became very creative at leavening all this as a ‘teaching outcome’ for any unit in English!! It certainly wasn’t within the purview of school management to produce anything at all which these kids could enjoy, much less succeed in doing. On top of all that, climate catastrophizing merely adds insult to injury. And it provides easy catch-phrases for kids who’ve been unable to learn anything more complex than catch-phrases.