As I write this at the beginning of April, week 2 of the school closure, we face a very uncertain future. The first draft of this ‘eco living’ article was written when Coronavirus was something affecting others. I decided to stay with the topic because I am confident that when it is read in theMichaelmas term, ‘green living’ will be, if anything, even more appropriate as we emerge from the Covid-19 shut down into a rather different world of 2021 onwards.

I want to explore how we ourselves can live, and present to our pupils, a well thought through and deeply real ‘green’ approach to life; and avoid mere virtue signalling, eco-fashion, superficiality. There are a worrying number of highly intelligent young people who have bought into the delusion that buying the vegan options peddled by global chains like Subway is ‘helping the planet’. I would like our schools to be challenging this. We can widen their understanding to show that homemade sandwiches using home baked bread, with a filling of eggs from the chickens who live in the garden, or even the non-vegetarian option of chicken from free range birds reared in the local farm, is an infinitely more ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ and ‘helping the planet’ way of living.

I suggested to my grammar school, top UK intellects, yr13, RS set that it would be more effective if they did their Extinction Rebellion Climate Strike on a Saturday. They really could not see that taking a Friday off school (where the teachers would catch up the missed work somehow) was essentially a day’s holiday hanging out with their friends. XR Climate Strike on a Saturday would mean, as they themselves pointed out without any hint of irony, would not work because they have jobs to go to.

I would like schools to have the courage and knowledge to teach our pupils to recognise, and then avoid, merely virtue signalling the last eco fashion. How can we enable them to use their intelligence and education to follow through to a much deeper level of analysis and understanding? Doing this will require the adults to behave like adults. I cannot think of any other time when so many adults pretended to have their thinking shaped by a 16 year old. Personally, I want to be informed on things eco by people with at least degree level academic study. I would much prefer them to have years of post doc research, combined with a mature understanding of how societies work gained through life experience.

Sustainable living has to be just that: ie it sustains the economy while it is steered in a different direction. Adopting an ‘eco living’ approach must move beyond ‘going vegan’ as a fashion statement. It must be about developing a radical new relationship with the world and the way we interact with it. Many of these genuinely sustainable was of living will be deeply countercultural. This will not however be in the way XR think they are countercultural. XR strike me as totally conformist and mainstream in the university educated under 25s and ‘aging hippie’ demographics. Our pupils need to be countercultural to that section of the youth culture to which they belong. This is likely to include activities such as growing vegetables, keeping chickens, baking bread, repairing their own iPhones and laptops, making and mending their own clothes, buying from charity shops, DIY recycling and upcycling projects. XR’s doom-laden, misanthropic propaganda is a contributory factor to the mental health crisis in UK.  Teaching our pupils the skills and mindset to adopt some simple, practical, deliverable ‘green’ activities and life changes is likely to be a route to countering this and producing good mental health now and in the future.

I would like to use my son as an illustration. He is anything but the standard eco warrior. He is a typical product of Independent Sector schooling: robustly and highly educated, rugby player, CCF, ‘Muscular Christianity’ of Anglican School Chapel, self-reliant and keen to serve others. His radically countercultural life – including neatly cut hair and smart clothes for work – probably means he has done more for the planet than the vast majority of virtue signalling eco warriors on XR protests in London. Some examples … His transport is a self-maintained 30 year old Landrover, for several years this was run on used vegetable oil from industrial kitchens. The tractor he bought to maintain his mother in law’s paddock is a 1960 Fordson. His petrol lawn mower is from the 1970s. He has a well-equipped workshop in which he can transform other people’s discarded material into whatever they may need to equip their smart town house. He is a great forager on eBay, FB Marketplace, in skips and elsewhere. Many of the skills he uses had their origin in his DT lessons at school.

What can Prep Schools do to sow the seeds in our pupils of a real ‘green lifestyle’ as shown by my son – and those others who inhabit internet forums dealing with repair, recycle, upcycle, maintain-old-machinery – and lead them away from the anxiety inducing propaganda of XR?

The Right to Repair movement is one the children can probably relate to. They are a generation deeply attached to their smartphones; also the demographic which breaks them. Can they learn how to replace a screen themselves? Simply identifying this is an option could be enormously important for when they are older. In technology lessons, or a tech club, dismantling an iPhone could be explored – my guess is there are plenty of old smart phones in draws in the children’s homes. Can we introduce our pupils to ideas of self-repair, re-use and upcycle?

A search on YouTube for ‘home recycling’ will identify a range of ideas along these lines. Building your own smelter to turn aluminium cans into ingots, and then sand casting, may be going too far for Prep School age; however such projects can sow seeds for future ‘green living’. For now, there are plenty of channels with that Blue Peter cereal packet and sticky back plastic approach to making things. This may not be where our affluent and sophisticated Prep School children are right now; however a real green agenda in school would be pointing our pupils in this direction. If they are going to acquire something and then throw it away 6 months later, it makes sense for the raw materials to be something heading for the bin anyway. Have a look at @iFixit and @RestartProject for links to self-repair. The Precious Plastics network shows what genuine recycling can look like with their use of open source plans and small industrial units to take plastic waste and turn it into useable and saleable items.

I hope people will be reading this edition of Prep School in a world which, although changed, is still basically functioning. Many Independent Schools will be financially hit by these closures. Many aspects of life are likely to be radically rethought as we emerge from school closure. Learning self-sufficiency and self-reliance; gaining an understanding of the technology we use and the ability to repair it; having the ability to grow our own food and make more of our own food even if the ingredients are bought … all these will be enormously useful – and very ‘green’ – skills which will equip our pupils for whatever world they face as adults. Equipping our pupils to be far more creative in their use of the earth’s resources could in fact be a major element in keeping our schools functioning and providing children with the top-class education which has always been delivered by Prep Schools in the UK.