A series of recent events in France have shown that younger generations are increasingly dissatisfied with current science programmes. During a graduation ceremony on May 10, a group of students from AgroParisTech, an institution specialised in agricultural sciences, called on their fellow students to abandon their studies in light of the current ecological crisis. The following day, in an opinion piece published in Le Monde, students from France’s Écoles Normales Supérieures voiced their concerns about science not meeting today’s challenges.
These and other initiatives show that while teaching students equations is still necessary, it’s no longer sufficient. Young people need to understand why studying science can help them tackle future crises, starting with the environment. To help, we need to teach them how to work as a group, create, put theory into context, and – even more challenging still – make them feel like they’re agents of change, and not just bystanders.
