'At Springfield, we are allowed to give our own opinions’

Quote from a Grade 10 Pupil in a recent (anonymous) survey about Springfield

It was good to hear Jess Holing at the Valedictory Service thank Springfield in her speech to the school and matric parents for ‘encouraging her to question things’.

The challenge facing all parents and teachers is to encourage their charges to question, query or interrogate all concepts and ideas which are put before them. Textbooks, Wikipedia, Facebook and TV news are definitely not the purveyors of true facts and our children have to be taught not to accept anything at face value. The skill we need to teach them is one of discussing issues without getting personal, of debating without automatically having a winner and of understanding another point of view without necessarily agreeing with it. ‘Raise your argument not your voice’ is a mantra on which all parents should insist as they wrangle over various issues with their children round the dinner table.

One can only admire the courage and tenacity of Greta Thunberg, the 16 year old Swedish girl who was a 2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee. She used the occasion of the recent UN Climate Action Summit to address world leaders with passion and vigour. She was relentlessly logical and uncompromising in her address to the world leaders as she cut through the obfuscations and muddled thinking of politicians on the issues of Climate Action. The white heat of her passion remorsefully excoriated the politicians who were exposed, like emperors of old, as wearing no clothes - not also to mention losing their hearts in the excoriation process. There was no solace in what she had to say and even I, watching from the safety of my armchair, felt uncomfortable.

'You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” she said accusingly. 'The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line.’

How do we as adults respond to our children when they zealously express such passion on issues about which they feel so deeply? Those car trips home and dinner time conversations become even more important opportunities to have meaningful family conversations.

Trump’s sarcastic response was not really befitting a world leader: 'She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!’ In one thoughtless tweet, he belittled a cause and a 16 year old young woman whose only fault was to take on a cause affecting our future world.

On the last day of the third term, many Springfield pupils who felt just as strongly as Greta, joined in the march through the streets of Cape Town. My challenge to them is to ask what has changed in their personal lives after that march? Are they now questioning why so many cars are coming to Springfield and that we should rather be sharing lifts? Do they now question the need for air conditioners and heaters when conditions are not ideal in the classroom? Do they now question their motives when they nag their parents for the latest must-have cell phone model?

Most of us can’t change the world and we most emphatically can’t change Trump, but by asking the questions which Jess exhorts us to do, we can certainly change our own personal worlds.

Keith Richardson