A rather good day...

A rather good day.

I told myself I wouldn't do it, but I did it

I showed Greta Thunberg's UN speech.
Julie,  a great environmental educator, once told me, "No tragedies before high school!!". I've tried.

But a third of the class had already seen it. Common points of cultural reference are important to us, so we kinda had to. I prepped the class in the gentlest way possible, and their level of attention was excellent. We watched for 4:30.

The speech is passionate and well-crafted. It is as impactful as Churchill's beaches, King's dreams, or Henry's scars. It is reasonned like a thesis and edged like a falchion. It is more than a little violent. Those four brief minutes may alter history, but it certainly wasn't very nice to hear.


Several of us, however, found the Easter Egg. The moment in which Greta, speaking with great venom towards the world's leaders, offered something to her peers, the children:

"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean."

She is paraphrasing JRR Tolkien*. Samwise Gamgee, faced with unending tragedy, is trying to help Frodo. Sam's speech is all about hope, the future, going home, and the stories that we will tell.  While castigating the world's leaders, Greta offers a hand of hope to the children whose imaginations include Middle Earth, Hobbits, and Heroes.

I haven't found Middle Earth, but we may have found a hero.

*Tolkien was a South African, a reluctant soldier in the Somme, a cryprographer contemporary to Turing, and a man very committed to peace. But he is not the hero.