Issue 41 • April 2019 • Record of Lent Term 2019
THE
OCELLUS From the Headmaster
Greta Thunberg is fifteen, a pupil from Sweden. Recently she spoke at a meeting of the United Nations Climate Conference. It was a remarkable speech. With great self-confidence, she chided the delegates, ‘You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children.’ It was an uncompromising observation, spoken to representatives of an organisation famous for trying to arrive at compromises. I was most struck by the accusation that the delegates were ‘not mature enough to tell it as it is’. Compromise is viewed, in many ways, as an adult activity. It is the result of experience. It tries to take slow, steady steps towards a solution. By contrast, young people are often criticised for oversimplifying, and with being impatient. Yet there is no doubt that the policy of compromise has drawbacks as well as strengths. On the positive side, it recognises that people do not always agree, and it is a way of avoiding conflict. On the other hand, it can also seem cynical and unprincipled: at best the policy of those who lack the courage of their convictions, at worst a cynical ploy to protect mutual interests. I suspect that was Greta’s point. The psychologist Kohlberg suggests that there are developing stages of moral decision-making. Making decisions based on self-interest or from conformity with the group, are judged as less developed, less mature, than when a person is able to make moral decisions from a principled conscience, and is willing to take a stand. On balance I suppose most of us would say there are times to compromise and times to take action. If so, one of the deciding factors must be urgency. The vast majority of the world’s scientists tell us that climate change is real, imminent and very dangerous. Our own David Attenborough spoke at the same UN conference as Greta, saying ‘“If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon." That certainly sounds urgent. Greta was speaking in coordination with strikes and demonstrations about climate change by schoolchildren around the world. It may be ill judged for a Headmaster to condone pupils skipping classes, but this is surely a time when younger voices must be heard, because their future is at stake. This is also a topic about which they seem to be speaking with more maturity than many adults.
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Front Page Photo: Inaugural Cokethorpe Show Jumping Competition