There is a story that our first language came from our walking through the world and needing to map where we have been. Step, rock, step, puddle, step, plant, step, grass… Poetry, with its rhythm, is like re-creating the stories of our life’s journeys.
But footsteps can also be seen to be the damage we, our lives, our everyday actions, make on our planet. We can measure the size of the destruction we create, our footprints, and then try to reduce it.
But to truly understand what we are destroying, and its meaning to us, maybe we should harken back to the rhythm of our feet and create, once again, our maps of our lands through that language we know as poetry.
Poetry has been used to fight for freedom, for telling the stories of science, for love, for remembering and telling our history, for helping to overthrow governments, for fighting for justice, for exploring who we are and where we are, now let us use it to help save the planet we live on.
The Humanities Education Centre is based in Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London. The Centre promotes the values, aims and principles of development education and global citizenship through all areas of education.
Development education encompasses the following principles:
- Enabling people to understand the links between their own lives and those of people throughout the world;
- Increasing understanding of the economic, social, political and environmental forces which shape our lives;
- Developing the skills, attitudes and values which enable people to work together to bring about change and take control of their own lives;
- Working towards achieving a more just and sustainable world in which power and resources are more equitably shared.
Global footprints is a website that is used by children in primary and secondary schools. Simply by answering 18 questions on-line you can measure your effect on the planet.
It is a much broader idea than ‘eco-footprints’ or ‘carbon-footprints’. These simply look at the effect of your actions on the biological environment. The Global Footprint also takes into account attitudes about gender, racism, sexism and war.
Once students have found our their footprints they can read on the site ways of reducing its size. They can then make a pledge about their own way of life, or create a project with their class, friends or school council to reduce the footprint. On the site there are other activities including a quiz and a whole school footprint survey.
This website is one of several created by the Humanities Education Centre, one of a group of development education centres around the country. These work with community and school groups promoting global citizenship and understanding of world development issues, such as sustainability.
A Humanities Education Centre website aimed at teachers of citizenship, sharing news and good practice:
A Humanities Education Centre website sharing news and views between primary school children in East London:
www.eastendtalking.org.ukWebsite of Development Education Centres in South East England: London and South-east England Regions (LaSER) Global Dimension
www.local4global.org.uk/index.htm