Thank you, Anya, for saying what we all need to hear, and for your eloquence and courage.
Why go to school?
Because school is important. Because school is vital for us to progress in this society. Because school teaches us to understand the world.
But at the same time, why go to school, when we have to act like the adults we are still learning to become? The youth are rising up. We are the seeds of a movement bigger than all of us, tackling a problem that’s bigger than all of us.
We can shout and we can stamp and we can write letters to our MP, but it doesn’t work. The only protest that will make us heard is being somewhere we’re not meant to be. We’re not at school. We’re coming together, right here, right now, because the people with the power have ignored us and pushed us to this point.
Why go to school, when we are fighting a war no longer about education? Climate change is basic fact now, it’s common knowledge. But nothing is done by the people at the top because they want to keep their wealth, and their status, and their power. But when we come together today in the hundreds of thousands that we are, we have power also, and it will only grow and grow.
Why go to school, when our environment -our planet – is literally, physically, tangibly falling apart around us? When we can’t afford the food made expensive by farms affected by high temperatures, and abnormal weather patterns?
Why go to school?
I’m not at school.
Because school can’t teach me to understand how a crisis of this magnitude hasn’t been solved yet.
The Haven Eco-Church 