“The world isn’t exactly doing well” – that’s how Luisa Neubauer wants to convince more than a thousand students that it is important to talk about climate change. The climate activist sits before an impressive backdrop of gigantic icebergs on the sailboat “Malizia Explorer” in the heart of Antarctica. The students listening to her, meanwhile, sit by Lake Constance, in Hamburg or Berlin, and have joined via Zoom the “Classroom from the Ice.” Among the roughly 1,300 Zoom participants is also Kika host Tobias Krell, who as Checker Tobi is the face of the knowledge show of the same name.
He first connects Luisa Neubauer and the freelance journalist Lea Wowra to the virtual lesson. The two are meant to explain, from the sailing ship, the peculiarity of Antarctica in a child-friendly way, but also to share the personal impressions of their journey. They report that it is currently summer there and that it does not get dark at night.
Child-friendly is here the keyword, because the activists, journalists and scientists have strived to create a child-friendly format about climate change. The whole event takes place during normal class time and does not rely on students having energy after a long day of school to engage with climate change.
Birte Lorenzen-Herrmann, formerly a teacher and now head of the educational program of the “Malizia Explorer,” praises in the Zoom call that the children with their interest in the ocean and climate are taking an important step. This knowledge is necessary in order to be able to do something against climate change. The invited guests talk about the humpback whale and the sounds of the glaciers. Only one thing is surprisingly given little space: how badly Antarctica actually is faring.
The Drama of the Climate Crisis Is Not Apparent
Surely it is interesting that the glacier roars at night, as Neubauer describes, or that the earwax of humpback whales provides insights into their travels, their health and their environment, as Wowra reports. But that the glaciers of Antarctica are losing volume at a record pace and that the Antarctic ice sheet reached its third-lowest maximum extent this September since measurements began, that is not mentioned in the lesson.
Wowra and Neubauer warn, indeed, that the melting ice could cause sea levels to rise worldwide. But they do not make this abstract danger concrete: that islands could disappear, cities could be flooded and storm surges become even more dangerous.
In addition, Neubauer tries to mimic the word choice and tone of a child. This is confusing given that some of the listeners are 14- to 15-year-old teenagers, while others have just learned the basics in second grade. Creating a learning format “for all ages” – the self-imposed goal of the initiative “My Ocean Challenge,” which underpins the Antarctic classroom – is indeed an ambitious task.
Surely the organizers did not intend to scare the listening children. Yet they have slipped into a slightly exaggerated optimism that does not do justice to the dramatic situation. One can indeed entrust children with seriousness – here it would have been necessary.
