Talking Politics

“For us” is the last part of our Erasmus+ project. We’re supposed to act as multipliers and create a change for all of us. That’s what we try every Friday when we go on strike for the climate (#FridaysforFuture) and this is what we did on last Monday, when we met Hamburg’s Minister of Education, Thies Rabe.

„Students are not interested in our future, our politics and our country!“ – that’s what most of the people think. But no one wants to see the truth. The truth is that students around the world are going on strike to protect our climate, our future and our world. But many politicians don’t want that to happen.

We’re not happy with politicians ignoring us and not taking us seriously and so we asked the minister of education of the city of Hamburg for change after he wrote a Tweet where he asked for punishment for the students who are on strike. The answer on this letter was an invitation to his office to discuss these issues with him.

For two hours we asked him questions about climate action, the education system, student leadership and how to combine all these things to create a curriculum that includes sustainability. Our aim was to give new perspectives on how students could be involved in different decision making processes, which includes the structure of our education system, the actions our politicians take to protect our world from climate change and new ways of learning ad teaching in order to foster student engagement in schools.

After a really long and tough discussion he promised to think about creating a new group that involves student voices to make decision making processes in the educational area more democratic. Today we can’t tell about the long term results of this talk but it was a great learning experience for all of us and we hope to see the change he promised in the future. However, no matter what happens, we’re never going to stop fighting for a better future and a better world.