To think this is not an activity in primary school

Your primary school child is learning about climate change in a geography lesson and you have a problem with it?

I do not think this is a contentious issue nor a political one.

I agree that children shouldn't have been asked to bring a t-shirt in, but I think it's probably a bit of a leap to say lessons on climate change terrify children.

All generations have something (legitimate) to fear, and all children are raised with that knowledge, explicit or otherwise. My mother's generation feared the nuclear bomb, bombs and the cold war were still a fear when I was a child, but not as much as the hole in the ozone layer and the danger of CFCs.

I don't think teaching about the world's problems creates a generation of protesters. I think it creates a generation interested enough in the world around them to actually make change.

Not as bad as during the train driver strikes a few years ago my daughter's teacher did a lesson on it where everyone as you can imagine was slagging off train drivers for striking. My husband was a train driver and my daughter felt very intimidated and said nothing but my husband was furious and I had to stop him writing the teacher an angry email

A school would not be taking children to a protest - it would be too difficult to keep them safe.

OP says she has no issue with child learning about climate change.

She is questioning whether learning about it by planning a protest (n.b. we're not sure actually how the lesson was taught) is appropriate.

No one is saying climate change itself is contentious or political, how you go about voicing your opinion IS a political issue. Poster are really struggling to understand this. Or maybe it's the classic MN thing of just disagreeing with the OP for the hell of it.

Are they teaching about the miniscule amount of damage the UK does compared to the rest of the planet or painting out the UK as the Big Bad Wolf.

As in most of the stuff taught to kids these days, the devil is in the detail.

I was at school in the mid-90s. I remember doing a project on climate change in a similar theme. Our history teacher even had us do anti-war projects!

Not a new concept and they should be applauded for doing it.

If you don't like the theme, think of the other learnings - how to put across points to strangers, how to think critically, how to debate are the few that came to mind.

How many gallons of water did it take to make those t shirts, and what about the sweatshop conditions to make them, and the carbon footprint to fly them to the uk 😂

Better off teaching them about RRR

Perhaps if teachers had taught some actual science instead of 't-shirt painting and chanting slogans' we might have found an actual solution by now?

I am sure there are many, many posters here who remember the utter fear they felt about nuclear war in the early 80s.
I don't think making a t.shirt to wear at Greenham Common (albeit, the lesson being about attending not actually going!) would have been appropriate, unless the lesson also included all the other ways people can make their voices and opinions heard.

Climate change is a scientific fact, not a belief.

They won’t be going on protest because they won’t be able to keep the children safe. Maybe they will do their own one at school.

If they are just aiming to raise awareness of climate change that is not political. If they are aiming to influence policy then that js political. I expect it is the former.

They do. Just because op didn't mention it, doesn't mean it's not happening.

I remember being taught about it, at the time it was focussed around the hole in the ozone layer as that was the biggest thing going on at the time.

Op also didn't mention that their child was being taught maths, spelling, etc. - are you assuming those aren't taught either?

I really do feel that some of the commenters come here because they're in a bad mood and want to pick at something.

Climate change is fact, it's on the curriculum. Would you object to them making a poster telling people to pick up litter?

For this reason I wouldn't do it as a teacher. I think the sentiment behind it is fine.

Climate change isn't a political opinion it's a scientific fact.

Is it? I’m a teacher and I’ve never taught it explicitly like this. It doesn’t usually warrant its own lesson in primary. In KS3 it is taught separately.

Protesting IS a political action.

I remember making posters and t shirts about the ‘greenhouse effect’ and CFCs/hole in the ozone layer 30 odd years ago. I don’t think this is a particularly new or dangerously radical activity OP - I think we’ve all got a bit too quick to react/polarise issues

Posters could have been made from scrap paper (collage style) to go on local noticeboards to advertise litterpicks.

They could have done a litterpick themselves. I

They could have brought in clean rags and designed made a rag rug to go in the library or the lobby.

They could have come up with a list of 101 ways THEY could help with the environment - maybe it's wearing used clothes rather than brand new, or shunning fast fashion, or growing some food on their windowsill, or using liquid glue rather than gluesticks, or learning to sew buttons or clothes or darn holes, or working out what food tends to get wasted in their homes and what they can do to stop that.

Children and teenagers, as a generation, are great at caring/worrying about the environment and not so great about doing anything to help.

The t shirts were an imaginative and memorable idea, but they contribute to the problem. If each of those children got into 5 environmentally friendly habits this year, that would make a genuine and lasting difference.

What a waste of tshirts how environmentally unfriendly.

Sorry, you are correct. It's not explicitly on the primary curriculum. I teach ks3 and 4 where it is on the curriculum to teach how the climate has changed since the Ice age and the interaction of human and physical systems.

Still not convinced there's anything wrong with the task. It's like saying dropping litter is bad for wildlife, don't do it. Climate change is real and is only politically decisive because so many politicians are corrupt, power hungry and on the payroll of the oil giants.

When I was at school (back in the last century) kids designed posters to encourage people to put their litter in the bin, @Summertime2006 - I don’t think this is very different.

I don't think they're going out to protest it's just a T shirt. I don't know what you imagine they are going to be putting on the T shirt.

Unfortunate typo in your opening sentence. I was trying to figure out where they would get a white tv and what they would do with the tv in school.

About 35 years ago I was asked to stand up in class and read the environmental rap I had been asked to write about the saving the planet from the greenhouse effect. I can still remember some of it. 😄