It is hard to be upbeat at the moment. Turn on the news, scroll through social media or walk down your high street and you will be bombarded by the world’s problems.
We see conflict on the front pages of newspapers and feel uneasy about still more conflicts that are being overlooked. Public infrastructure is crumbling after decades of neglect and vulnerable people are suffering. Evidence of a climate emergency is all around us and yet it can feel like the solutions to the problem are further from our grasp than ever.
The future wasn’t meant to be like this. When I was a teenager in the 1990s, I remember feeling a sense of optimism that things could, as D:Ream assured us, “only get better”.
Jacques Derrida coined the term “hauntology” to describe a feeling of nostalgia for a promised future that never came to pass. It can be difficult not to feel a sense of disappointment, and possibly even despair, at the way things have worked out. At the failures of our own generation.
Teaching hope for the world
But it is vitally important that our young people are allowed to have that same sense of optimism about what their future can hold as I had in those halcyon days. It is important to envisage a brighter possibility not only for their own lives but also for the planet.
We will need people with an education in science, technology, engineering and maths to create solutions to mitigate against climate change, and to design adaptations.
We will need historians who can help us to learn lessons from the past and reveal the route to a brighter future.
We will need writers, artists and actors who can help us to imagine what these futures can look like by helping us to understand our present.
And, of course, we will need geographers to help us to understand the processes that make the world work, and how to fix it when it doesn’t.
So how do we teach students to be hopeful in a world that can feel hopeless?
I have been inspired by the work of geography teacher . He suggests that a curriculum should allow students to do three things: evaluate progress, believe in humanity, and create a sustainable future.
For me, this doesn’t mean ignoring the problems that assail us, but addressing them in the spirit of optimism. For example, we need to teach students about the rise of misogyny, as this is something that blights their lives.
But we need to do it in a way that also shows how hard-won improvements in equality have been made and that there are cultures where women are respected rather than denigrated. Students need to appreciate that negative attitudes aren’t inevitable and that progress has been made and can be made again.
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We need to teach students about the climate emergency. It is something that should be hard to ignore, but we don’t need to teach it as a crushing inevitability - rather as a problem that human ingenuity can solve if tied to political will. Humanity is capable of amazing things, so let those things inspire the next generation.
Perhaps most importantly, we can teach students that creating a sustainable future isn’t just about small personal actions but meaningful structural changes in the world. There can be a temptation to heap personal responsibility on to young people to fix huge problems. If they turn off lights when going out of the room, put their rubbish in the right bin and are kind to the people in the room then they will have done their part.
Although well-meaning, this approach to sustainability education just doesn’t work. The politicians failing to take action today were given these messages themselves as children. It becomes a way for people who have the power to enact actual change to avoid their responsibility and pass it on to 7 billion individuals who do not have that power.
In terms of looking at how a better future can be created, we can teach our students to think bigger than just walking to school rather than taking the car. Instead we can teach them about the infrastructure changes that will make that better future possible.
Looking around us, the world might feel hopeless, but looking around our classrooms, we should feel very different. That is where hope for the future is being built.
Mark Enser is a freelance writer and author
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