Chris Packham: "Give them that trust."
Rather than just listen to [young people], which I find quite patronising, when people say "oh yes, we listen to young people". I think "no no", I want to trust them. Give them that trust, to do their own thing, I've got to say they've never let me down... They've made mistakes, but that's part of it. And I love them making those mistakes, it is joyous quite frankly, but they've never let me down, they've always excelled.
I love this. This is Chris Packham - broadcaster, artist, naturalist, campaigner - speaking to James O'Brien on Full Disclosure last week. The whole interview is worth a listen, but for this quote fast forward to 55min.
The attitude Packham is bringing here fills me with joy. Trust young people, give them an opportunity to do their own thing. It's an attitude that runs through our Generation Action work at Global Action Plan.
It should be at the heart of our formal education systems too but sadly, very evidently, isn't. This quote, from a school pupil, collected by the House of Lords Education for 11–16 Year Olds Committee and published yesterday, fills me with horror:
I can't tell you how many classes I've been in where the teacher has said ‘put your hand down, I can’t take questions this lesson because we just need to get through the content’.
Packham was referring to his YouTube series, 8 out of 10 bats, where he enabled young people to drive and present their own wildlife films.
For us, placing trust in young people is core to the (double award winning) Dirt Is Good Project, and our National Lottery funded Schools Good Life Charter work, both of which give young people the freedom to design and deliver their own projects, on topics they decide.
Our experience is the same as Packham's. When we give young people some agency and autonomy, when we show them that we trust them, they rarely let us down. Yes they make mistakes but most often, in the end, they excel. One of the students on our Schools Good Life project won a Hammersmith and Fulham Coldstream Guards Award this month for her work on the programme.
But probably the boldest thing we do - and I admit to having to be persuaded by my team to be ever braver with this - is to handover large chunks of the responsibility for the creation and content of our annual Transform Our World events and youth summits to young people.
In doing this we are resisting the temptation to control the content and the message, what we instead do is set some guidelines and ground rules and then pass the mic. The results are fantastic, we are delivering highly engaging events - now hosted on a bespoke events platform - that are by young people, for young people. They don't let us down.
While initially it felt risky to give young people these sorts of freedom, it now feels riskier not to - our events simply wouldn't be as good.
Right now, our Youth Panel are designing an event that will go live on Earth Day 2024. It will be on plastic pollution - their choice of topic - and they are meeting every week to figure out the running order, audience participation, key messages, curriculum links, and learning outcomes they hope to achieve.
We need more of this. More trust in young people. Let them loose, give them projects. They create wonderful things that are an end in themselves, but also - by doing real things, in the real world - they are also learning and gaining invaluable skills and experience.
At Global Action Plan, as we strive to Mobilise Generation Action [PDF], we are trying to nurture young people's ability to Grasp, Care, Imagine, Communicate, and Act.
The Grasp, Care, Imagine, Communicate, Act cycle, adapted, with permission, from the original by Nuith Morales and Peter Sutoris (2023)
Every time GAP engages young people we nurture at least one of these five key ingredients of a good education.
For us, the best way to achieve this is through student-led, project based learning that activates compassionate values, and enables young people to experience the camaraderie of collective action. We'd love to talk you about it.
Finally, to Chris Packham, thank you. Listening to you call passionately for more trust to be placed in young people made my day. And to the current and future shapers of Government education policy, please, please, take heed.
Global Action Plan is an environmental charity with 30 years’ experience of delivering positive change through education, behaviour change, campaigns, and advocacy. We are working for a green and thriving planet and do this by mobilising action on the systems that harm us and our planet.