@Yhinooma Yes, though more specifically that she instructs other people to skip school every week, not the fact that **she** skips school

It would be equivalent to someone trying to generate awareness for the importance of education by encouraging people to dump toxic waste in a river every friday.

@timorl What do you mean how? A central part of her message, what she is famous for, is telling people not to go to school on fridays.

@freemo This is a very strange way of looking at things. The walkouts are supposed to be a protest, right? Would you call any people advocating strikes "anti-work"?

@timorl No I wouldnt, but I also dont see those two as comparable.

With work the person striking has a need for that job, they are making a sacrifice (giving up pay) in order to enact change.

Kids playing hookie, however, are doing exactly what they want to do. Most kids dont want to be in school and would be more than happy to find a reason to get a day off.

Thats like calling it a strike if you take the day off work to go get ice cream and binge watch netflix. It isnt a strike if you are doing what you find enjoyable and make no sacrifices.

Moreover the thing you strike from is also the entity you wish to change. The strike intending to exert pressure on the institution you withhold your services from. So striking from school simply makes no sense in that regard either.

@freemo I think of the first part you write about as a necessary evil, rather than an inherent property of protests. Social change is difficult, the less inconvenience people trying to enact it face, the better.

As for the second part, I can think of few other things non-adults could do, that would exert more pressure on the institutions, and all of them either illegal or infeasible. It's worth remembering that, while schools certainly are a form of education, they also have different roles -- in particular keeping children/teenagers in a relatively safe place where their parents or society don't have to worry about them doing something stupid. If kids don't go to school, society has to figure out different solutions for these problems and that might be sufficiently annoying.

It would be better if the kids could do something more directly targeted at the institutions responsible, but those are governments. Influencing them can almost exclusively be done by voting or lobbying (neither possible for non-adaults, usually), so in this case they have to be targeted indirectly through society.

Maybe it's just my imagination that is failing me -- what form of protest would you suggest to teenagers, that would not be easy to ignore and legal?

@timorl I can think of a **lot** of things young adults could be doing that is both more effective and would represent an actual strike.

The most obvious and straight forward would be if they spent those fridays standing outside the school holding signs all day rain or snow cold or dry.. but aside from a few exceptions on a few days that isnt the form it is taking.

Second adults could do the same things as kids, they could jsut not go to work on fridays to strike and not bother standing outside with signs.. They dont because it wont enact change as readily as being visible and outside to protest. It is no different for kids, the fact that they are taking fridays off and not actually making any sacrafices themselves only shows they are not committed to the change, if they were they wouldn't be taking the lazy way out so often.

There are also countless other ways I could think of they could be striking that might be worthy of some respect... for example every friday they could refuse to use any fossile fuels, no electricity, refuse to get in any cars to go anywhere. Walk to school, take their bike to school that day, dont charge or use their phone, or their computer on that day. funny none of that is part of the "protest" either, most kids I've seen just sit at home in an airconditioned house.

Another form could be if instead of protesting during school they did it on the weekend. A hunger strike every friday to monday is going to turn some heads real fast.

There are literally countless ways that i can think of infinitely more effective (and effective) at protesting then to choose not to educate yourself everyday. That isnt putting any pressure on adults, its not taking anything away from anyone that would exert pressure. Its literally nothing more than being lazy and skipping out ont he responsibilities you already want to skip out on.

@freemo @timorl I agree with this. There is a good reason why workers on strike from a factory picket out front instead of sitting at home on their asses. This isn't so much a strike as an excuse to stay home.

@nothingplanet

Exactly. If Greta's message was to go to school at 6am and instead of being inside in a warm class room they were actually standing outside in the cold and rain every friday with signs then I would be a lot less critical.

@timorl

@freemo @timorl Although, as a small point to their defense, staying home from work is not a crime but truancy is. That is one operational difference.

@nothingplanet

If kids were actually getting arrested for this, or facing repercussions such as not getting into college I might agree with you.

However the response has been almost entierly to just let them. Many colleges have already told them anything related to this protest on their record wont effect them getting into college and I have not heard of any significant reports of truancy officers acting on this in any way.

If this were an actual thing and there was some concern fromin from the kids Id be likely to agree on this point.

@timorl

@freemo @nothingplanet I'm also very annoyed by your insistence that protestors must suffer for it to be a legitimate protest. Social change is difficult for inherent reasons, mostly because society will resist it in many ways. If we want the world to improve we shouldn't insist on making it even harder.

@timorl

No thats not what I said at all. I said there must be some sacrafice for it to be a "strike" not for it to be a protest, those are different words. What they are doing is not a strike, but it is a protest, jsut a very poorly designed one that makes those protesting look bad and is counter productive to the cause.

@nothingplanet

@freemo
This doesn't really address my main issue -- why do you insist they must suffer to be treated seriously? And I'm not asking why you think society won't take them seriously if they don't suffer (because I don't think this is the case for most of society, certainly not for me), this is a question personally addressed to you (and other people who feel the same, I guess).
@nothingplanet

@freemo @timorl I agree. Without an element of sacrifice I view this as less of a strike. It would be like if factory workers were on paid vacation as they striked.

@nothingplanet

Agreed

@timorl

@nothingplanet Uh, why would striking on paid vacation be a problem? Even from the suffering perspective it doesn't make sense to view it as worse, since paid leave is a limited resource for a worker.

Although at least in the case of workers I kind of understand the need for some suffering -- they are usually (at least recently) fighting for their own personal gain rather than social change, so it shouldn't be entirely free.
@freemo

@timorl

Its not that striking on paid vacation is a "problem" its just that it isnt a strike and wont enact change.

@nothingplanet

@freemo
Even if it's not effective that doesn't stem from the lack of protester suffering involved, but rather lack of pressure at the employer. But we are getting sidetracked, a protest to change society is quite different from a work related one, in more than one way, so it's not that relevant to the discussion.
@nothingplanet

@timorl

They are different, and those difference should be considered. but it isnt irrelevant. No one is looking at these kids going "oh wow, look how important it is to them we should change"... well no one except the people who already supported climte change activism for a while now.

the fact remains no one is going to take any protest action seriously (accept those already supporting the cause) if the whole basis is a movement to avoid self improvement, hard work, and education. "I am going to stop learning things until people do what I say" is about the worse way to protest imaginable. It makes you look uneducated, it means you encourage behavior that hurts the cause (lack of education is what got us into this mess) and overall indicates you are doing it for selfish reasons rather than to enact change itself.

Literally everything about the way the protest is designed is a failure. If I am any indication it certainly isnt helping either, I've withdrawn a **lot** of money I used to donate to this cause as a result and am no longer very active for similar reasons.

@nothingplanet

@freemo
(Damn, I think we finally started mixing threads, this will be unreadable. >.< Mastodon is terrible for multithreaded discussions, although few tools are better.)

It seems (at least to me) that many more people are paying attention to the issue due to Greta, so I am not so sure the impact is negative.

I don't think there is a anti-educational message there, it's more about this being the only way that could be in any way effective. Of the methods you mentioned earlier, only hunger strikes might actually fulfill the criteria of being hard to ignore, but if Greta called for those she would just be seen as a crazy extremist by everyone. Calling for self-harm of children wouldn't fly in the media.
@nothingplanet

@timorl

I dunno, there is no doubt greta has a lot of attention. But I dont really know of anyone paying attention to her who wasnt already a Climate Change Activist. Everyone I know of who was on the fence is still on the fence.

It seems to me her effect has largely been harmful, it just appears otherwise because ther eis a large group of activists who are raising her up. But yea literally anyone I personally know who was swayed one way or the other by her explicitly was mostly turned offby her approach and didnt support it.

Just look at this thread for an indication. I've had several people reboost my posts in this thread so far, and the others who have spoken up seem to be, for the most part, in agreement with me.

Whenever I bring this up I tend to get the same reaction, a bunch of people saying the same, that they were driven off by the anti-education message from Greta.

There is a **lot** of dislike for greta out there, there is damn good reason for it. But of course her supporters will pain it off like its just a bunch of conservatives or something, when it isnt. She is driving off a **lot** of people who were otherwise supportive of the climate change agenda.

I wouldnt say her message is anti-education so much as her actions have an anti-education effect.

@nothingplanet

@freemo I'm actually surprized to learn that students just stay home -- I only saw a couple instances and all of them included some forms of picketing. Wasn't this part of Greta's call (I would assume at least implicitly)? Do people actually just not go to school the way you say they do, or is it just your interpretation? I tried searching for that, but wikipedia quite explicitly states "(...)take time off from class on Fridays to participate in demonstrations(...)", so I'm just confused.

@timorl The official site for the strike has a google doc on their site with detailed instructions on how to strike. It basically says on the day of the strike you walk out of school, then "do what you feel is right" they list some examples of what that might be, one such example is a "quick" chat/rally on the school steps before going home for the day, which is the optiont he vast majority of students take, they walk out of school, hang out for a few minuteson the school steps, then go home

@freemo Well, finding their page was harder than I expected, but I assume you mean this doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vzhamVa5k1dYnUAvcxO6hF9MbtxHGVtnY2he5rkOSA4 . You seem to have missed the other 8 points that describe what to do, many of them requiring nontrivial amounts of work. While the call might be misinterpreted to only mean "don't go to school on Fridays", that is clearly not what it states there.

@timorl I'm aware of the other points... making a short video once and "talking to people", are not what I would consider all that much work. Sounds like your really stretching it.

@freemo Organizing even a short picket is quite a lot of work -- have you tried it? And that is the least effortful option they suggest. And still, no option to "just not come in on Fridays".

Also after reading the instructions I am even more unsure they suggest protesting every Friday -- the "Every Friday" bit in the "When" section seems more like "pick any Friday you want, it counts", and this is the way I have seen it interpreted before you mentioned it should be every Friday. Are you sure you are interpreting it correctly (i.e. as the authors and most people would interpret it)? In particular I still wonder if some students actually protest every week -- do you have any sources for that?

@timorl You'd have to watch her videos from that. But she pretty explicitly uses the phrasing "every friday" quite often when refering to the strike.

Every friday a bunch of kids following her instructions and walking out of school, hanging out with some friends on the steps for a few minutes, then going home is going to have a hard time getting my respect. There is nothing on any level redeemable about that.

@kravietz The issue isnt tht **she** skips school, thats not at all part of the issue. The fact that she has a voice that people listen to and is telling millions of other girls and boys to skip school though is a VERY different thing, and unexcusable.

There is also a huge difference between occasionally skipping school and doing so every single friday.

@kravietz Yea I keep wanting a third-party choice since the Dems seem unlikely to produce a candidate I can vote for. I'd rather not vote for Trump if i can find anyone half decent. Sadly so far I can not.