Guiding Question Reflection: To what extent is climate justice education centered in Ghanaian classrooms?

Choosing my guiding question for this journey was easy. My dissertation topic is examining how we can center climate justice education through a critical global citizenship education lens in K12 classrooms in the US, so the chance to explore these ideas in a place disproportionately impacted by climate change was something I knew I could not ignore, even though there were so many questions on which I could have based research. Although the impacts of climate change are now being felt all over the world, the majority of the worst fallout is happening in regions and countries that are not responsible for causing most of the damage. The US, Europe, and China cause these climate challenges, but the people suffering the most right now live in places that do not have the infrastructure to manage these disasters.

Ghana, only 400 miles north of the equator and only a few hundred miles south of the largest desert on earth, is at the center of this climate emergency. In fact, the Prime Meridian and the Equator cross one another off the Ghanaian coast, the closest spot to land on the planet at which the two lines cross, as though the universe has Ghana in its climate crosshairs. As sea levels rise, the Ghanaian coast is subject to dangerous tides and flooding. Coastal communities that live at sea level have already been washed away, or have had to relocate to higher ground even though their communities have been living in those spots for hundreds of years. On the northern borders, there are problems with refugees from Burkina Faso fleeing the wars that have started as the Sahara continues to spread. Due to the elimination of arable land from the region, battles over water and food have begun, and only promise to get worse as religious extremists move in and attempt to wrestle control of these resources. In Volta, where I spent the most time when I was outside Accra, the rainy season comes later and later every year, and does not last as long as it once did, which has led the farmers to plant fewer crops for fear that the rains may never come leaving them with fields filled with dead crops. Because so many of the homes, and the schools in Ve-Koloenu, do not have running water, huge tanks are still filled via buckets carried atop the heads of students from the streams to the campuses. When we were in Ghana, it was the "rainy" season, yet we only witnessed about 20 minutes of rain the entire time we were there. The streams and rivers were low, and the teachers in our host communities were concerned about what this means for the future. According to Obed, my host teacher and a farmer at heart, the desertification of this region, even though it sits at the base of mountains covered in rain forest, is happening already. While we were in Accra on the front end of our trip, a massive Saharan dust swirl was sitting on top of us, creating a heat dome that blocked out the sun with yellowish clouds. On top of the constant musty smell caused by the desert sands, the heat dome also trapped the smoke from the ceaseless refuse burning and open-fire cooking happening in every spot we visited. Rain would have been a welcome respite, but it just never came.

It was into this environment that I brought up these conversations about climate justice education. In the schools we visited in the city, I asked teachers and students alike if there were conversations happening in classrooms about climate change, and the impact this is having in Ghana. The teachers lamented that they wished they had more time to discuss some of these concepts because they told me their students had real questions about why things are changing. In the science classes, there are discussions about climate change, but these are strictly from a science perspective and there are not yet lessons about the societal ramifications, or the climate justice elements of this crisis. In every instance when I brought up these topics, I was met with a bit of confusion as well, which I appreciated because it helped me to shift focus before I went out to the host community. In a geography class I was in, the teacher did a great job getting students to list all the things that cause "environmental degradation", but he and the students were unwilling to really use the term "climate change", and they certainly were not seeking to investigate who is to blame for this catastrophe. As a doctoral candidate in curriculum studies, I have spent the better part of the last four years investigating ways in which systems of oppression perpetrated by the global north and "western" nations like the United States reek havoc on nations like Ghana for our own benefit, never really acknowledging the damage we are doing to these beautiful places and people in the name of capitalism and political power. Because I have been so enmeshed in these ideas, including reading many Indigenous climate justice scholars from around the world, it never occurred to me that the people living in these places would not be really, really mad about this imbalance. I figured I would arrive to meet people who were tired of westerners and our ridiculous behaviors such as fast fashion that creates massive clothing landfills all over West Africa, or our addiction to always having new technology which is causing a run on cobalt in Congo leading to a massive human rights disaster in an already troubled place. I figured everyone I met and spoke to about my guiding question would resent my existence in their country. I figured that they would look at me, as I drank from my plastic water bottle that would eventually wind up in a trash fire pile polluting their air because I could not risk drinking the local water, and see me for the climate injustice perpetrator I really am. I am enraged on their behalf, so their lack of vengeful anger was an interesting turn of events.

In Volta, Obed and I planned to co-teach a climate change lesson where we would explore these ideas deeper. Because I had already learned in Accra that these ideas of climate "injustice" are not well known, I decided to change up the lesson a bit. Earlier in the day, Sarah led a PD for teachers (pictured above) in which she and I utilized some of our favorite thinking routines with the teachers so they could experience the kind of activities the students should be doing in class. One, which to us is so fundamental in a student-centered classroom, is the Know-Want to Know - Learned chart. In an effort to demonstrate to the two teachers in the classroom I was teaching in just how to use K-W-L, I asked the students to write down everything they KNOW about climate change already. Once we got past the initial challenge of getting the students to quietly think and then write down their own ideas (because they are very used to teachers dictating to them what to write and think), they started generating some really interesting points.

The students said that they KNOW they burn too much refuse, and this is causing air pollution and too much carbon emission. They said they KNOW that their sanitation system, or lack thereof, causes problems in their water supply, which can impact the health of people and livestock in the community, threatening food sources. They said that they KNOW they are having later, shorter wet seasons, and hotter dry seasons. They said they KNOW their lands are desertifying, and they KNOW that this is a scary idea. Then, they said they KNOW about the hole in the ozone layer caused by CFCs... which made me pause. I asked them to explain that one a bit more, so one of the young women (since the majority of the class was female) stood up to talk about the different layers of the atmosphere, and how the CFCs cause the hole in the ozone that is making it so hot in Ghana. I looked at Obed, who also seemed confused. I asked the students where they read about this hole, and they responded that Obed had told them to prepare for a lesson on climate change so they read their science textbook on the subject. Ah. Their outdated textbooks. It made sense, but it demonstrated that we may need to shift the lesson again as well.

We moved on to explore what they WANTED to KNOW, and this is where everything clicked into place. Once they saw that I was really listening, and that I was not going to tell them what to think or what to ask, they started to really talk. They wanted to know what other factors are causing climate change. They wanted to know how climate change was different in different places in Africa, and in other places on earth. They wanted to know if it is as bad in the United States as it is in Ghana, and they wanted to know if it can be stopped. This is when I was able to capitalize on those outdated textbooks afterall. I told them to imagine a time when the whole world agreed to ban those CFCs, and to imagine the day when we could celebrate the fact that the people of this planet came together and agreed to solve a problem that big by giving up a convenience like aerosol. I asked them if they thought this was possible, and because they are young people who believe in the good in people, they said they could envision that day! So, I told them that this had happened, and that we had come together, and that we HAD healed the hole in the ozone. They rejoiced in this knowledge and, true to form, did not question why their textbooks were so out-of-date. They chose instead to focus on the positive, and on the idea that we could do it again! We could come together to solve these problems. So, we moved on to brainstorming ideas about how they could address the challenges in their own community, specifically the burning of refuse. They brainstormed ways they could initiate recycling on campus, or work with the community to create a trash collection. They thought about finding more water barrels to use as rain barrels so when it does finally rain, they could collect water (and mosquitos, which led us on a tangent about malaria and why I have access to medications they do not) to use later.

Even with their outdated textbooks, the students were better informed than many students in my building, and in my community. While I had hoped to meet young people in Ghana who were tuned in to the climate crisis since they are living it right now, I did not realize I would encounter so many people seeking to take real action on the crisis as soon as they gain some knowledge on the topic. Since the education ministry is working to bring more inquiry and critical thinking into Ghanaian classrooms, I think there will be future discussion about possible solutions taking place across the nation. The challenge will be getting young people to stand up for their country, and for their lives. A big concern we heard over and over again is that Ghanaian children, and West African children, are not assertive enough to stand up to the West. The leader at T-TEL said it best, when she said they were trying to strike a balance so that Ghanaian children learn how to manage the West, but avoid "being consumed" by the West. The rage I feel about climate injustice is there, simmering under the surface, and it emerged once the students started asking the big questions, and started seeking real answers. At some point, they will see that they are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis, for now, on behalf of an industrialized world that consumes much more than it gives, and that destroys more than it builds.

Ghanaian children are connected to their land, their families, and their traditions. They are inherently intertwined with nature in a way that helps them to understand climate change instinctually. In the US, we have to force our young people to see how their choices lead to these problems, but in Ghana, they live with the result of those choices every day. And yet, they choose hope and the belief that people can come together and make the changes necessary before it's too late. While intellectually I know it's not that easy, and that the people of the Global South and South-adjacent places are going to have to mount a massive, and united, global front to thwart the powers behind climate destruction, learning and talking with those lovely students, in that lovely place, gave me a hope I have not experienced in a long time. As I suspected I would find, we have a lot to learn from Ghana and the Ghanaian people. I hope that I get to collaborate more in the future with my Ghanaian friends, and revisit some of the actions the students were planning to take after we left. More than ever, it is time for the global north and the West to stop talking and listen to the ideas emerging from the places being significantly impacted by climate injustice. Through these dialogues, we may just be able to generate solutions to our greatest problems before it is too late. I am grateful for my time in Ghana because it helped me to clarify what I want to spend my time working on for the foreseeable future, and I hope I can generate some global education partnerships to make it happen.