Learning from contemporary student activism: towards a curriculum of fervent concern and critical hope

In recent youth political movements (including the global School Strike for Climate marches and the US student-led gun control movement), students have literally walked out of a form of schooling (and politics) that does not address their present concerns. This article considers these recent examples of the political activism of school-aged students as an entry point to a discussion of a curriculum of fervent concern. We argue that the work that young people in these movements do with ‘troubling’ feelings like grief and panic compels a rethinking of the political feelings associated with transformative pedagogy and co-constructed curricula. We consider what schools might learn from student activism, and political and media responses to their activism. We explore what it might look like for educators to remain awhile with fervent feelings (like grief and fear) – often considered “negative” and traditionally to be avoided or eliminated from classrooms and schools – and to disclose the potential of working with shared concerns for transformation of the present. Examples from Student Action Teams (SATs) in Victoria are offered: of curriculum where students are centrally involved in working with matters of shared, fervent concern, and where students devise their own curricula. These examples gesture towards possibilities for the formal curriculum to be re-generated to address collective concerns, and for the reconfiguring of schools to become sites for compelling learning and potent action. This is an ethical curriculum framework, where learning is political and living ethically is a learned politics.