Oh the irony of naming a scientific discovery over someone whose entire platform is anti-education in nature. I cant tell you how many environmentalist organizations I had to stop donating to or participate in because they adopted her image too. She makes me sad :(
@freemo
Huh, how is she anti-education?
@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?
@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.
@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.
@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