For many further education students, there’s a concern that’s just as pressing as exam results and career prospects: the future of the world. Today’s young people tend to be more engaged with urgent international issues, and they want to have their voices heard.

Jessica Taft, an associate professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Santa Cruz, has spent the past decade looking at children’s rights and intergenerational activism. In a statement released in the run-up to the Global Climate Strike in September 2020, the author of The Kids Are in Charge: activism and power in Peru’s movement of working children called for more attention to be given to youth activism.

“Around the world, we are seeing children and youth engage as social, political and economic actors, demonstrating their capacity to help make social change,” she said. “Adults make a lot of assumptions about children and what they’re capable of, and those assumptions are often quite false.”

So, where is this appetite for action coming from? The “Greta effect” is thought to be a significant factor. Greta Thunberg was just 15 when she began protesting for action on the climate crisis outside Sweden’s parliament. At first, she simply sat with a sign reading Skolstrejk för klimatet (school strike for climate), but the scale of her protests grew quickly, inspiring a generation of fellow activists across the globe, whose voices now ring out in educational institutions and beyond.

What, then, can FE colleges do to ensure that they aren’t underestimating the capabilities of their students? How can colleges ensure that social activism is supported, without putting students in danger or detracting from their studies?

Colleges speaking openly about student activism

The first thing to address is the way the conversation is brought into the classroom, says Hollie Barnes, an English lecturer at Cambridge Regional College, who has seen her students inspired by the activism happening on their doorstep.

“With [the news coverage] every day, the media [provides] a learning opportunity,” she says. “Students are asking questions now more than ever within college: ‘Miss, have you seen that Extinction Rebellion group on the TV? That was in Cambridge!’”

The key thing to do when this happens, she continues, is not to shut the conversation down, even if it feels potentially challenging. “We have a duty to further explore topics within lessons in order to widen and challenge students’ opinions to those outside of their own circle, as well as challenging our own practice,” Barnes says. “By providing a safe space to open up those discussions, it can encourage learners to look beyond the discussion in the classroom and seek out further important topics.”

There’s also the option to take a more proactive approach. Some staff actively seek out opportunities to introduce ideas about activism into their classes, such as Gemma Campbell, a teacher at an FE college in Wales, who decided to initiate a conversation about rights to education with her International Baccalaureate students.

“[We] were discussing the [United Nations] Global Goals [for sustainable development] from their research for their Rotary Youth Speaks topic, and they were horrified to learn about not only gender inequalities in education, but that education generally was not just a given, like it is in the UK,” she says. “A tutorial discussion led to them discussing the Malala Fund and her Books not Bullets campaign.”

Inspired by Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist, the students organised a day of activism, setting up a booth in reception and securing the help of library staff to promote the campaign. “It wasn’t simply a ‘big idea’ but a carefully researched, considered and planned day,” Campbell says. “It had purpose and passion, and it was simple and safe, yet as part of a wider campaign it also promised maximum impact.”

Beyond the placards

So, how can colleges nurture this sort of approach? Barnes says the role of the teacher is to push past the initial sensationalism - the shock of seeing protesters clash with police, for example - and engage with the topics being debated.

“To not engage in discussion would be to hold them back from a teaching opportunity,” she says. “The thrill of a protest is enough to grab any 16-year-old’s attention, but once you begin to dissect a topic more deeply in class, their questions reveal deeper thrills: they care about the core values in each situation.”

Campbell says their level of engagement will often depend on what students are studying: she has spotted a correlation between course choice and involvement in community issues.

“The IB students were always the ones who got involved in social activism,” she continues. “The global aspect of [the IB] studies [provides] the opportunities to expand discussions beyond the syllabus and exam-focused studies of A level, and this has allowed them to have the time and the passion to invest properly in these.”

Campbell has noticed that those same students often take their activism into adulthood. “Even now, years later, they are the ones who I see sharing [details of] protest events, championing a chosen issue and passionately advocating for a cause,” she says. “These students were always the ones involved in youth councils and voluntary groups.”

Amike George, now 21, was one such student. When she was 18 and studying for her A levels in London, she began a campaign against period poverty. It started with an online petition, which led to protests and then the founding of campaign group Free Periods, which works to encourage schools and colleges to sign up for free period products. She has also published a book entitled Make it Happen: how to be an activist, where she covers topics including choice of cause, how to keep the campaign positive and the “red tape” of protests.

“My teachers were really supportive,” she recalls. “I remember asking if I could delay the start of my A-level mocks because I’d been invited to go to Washington, DC to deliver a talk on activism, and I was convinced the answer would be no, but they agreed to let me do the exams when I got back, which was really generous.”

George says colleges would benefit from no longer treating activism as an add-on, but instead as an integral part of the educational experience. “There is a real sense of urgency around finding solutions to the climate crisis, structural racism and misogyny, and we’re seeing young people rising up against the injustices they see,” she says. “But it’s so hard to campaign effectively when we’re made to feel that our activism is a distraction.

“Schools and colleges must offer mental health support to students who are running campaigns alongside their education and spending all their time outside lessons trying to be heard and raising awareness. I found the constant pressure of giving interviews between lessons, running to have meetings straight after school and spending my evenings writing to MPs intense and draining, and that caused a huge amount of anxiety.”

‘Peaceful assembly’

FE staff have a difficult line to tread between adhering to their safeguarding duties and supporting students in using their right to protest. There is a legal right to protest, as protected under the European Convention on Human Rights, but only under certain conditions. Article 11 says everyone has the right to “peaceful assembly” and that “no restrictions shall be placed on the exercise of these rights other than such as are prescribed by law … for the prevention of disorder or crime”. This emphasis on peaceful and lawful protest should be communicated clearly to students.

But Campbell says that syllabus changes after the latest exam reforms have left gaps in understanding of what it means to protest peacefully. “The loss of government and politics as an A level also [means that] students [are no longer] being taught about the purpose and organisation of protests and what they mean,” she says. Campbell is concerned that some students like “the idea of placards, banners and marching more than the cause at the heart of the protests”.

She says students need to be taught more about these aspects, rather than just covering college toilets in stickers or defacing posters with political slogans. “There is a fine line between supporting students’ right to protest and allowing them to go on unchecked into wanton vandalism and possible extremism,” she says. “But, ultimately, I do support students’ right to protest.”

Barnes adds that, above all, it’s important that students know where the boundaries are, and that those lines are discussed openly and unflinchingly.

“Although their views are important, we are trained thoroughly to pinpoint behaviours that we feel overstep the mark,” she says. “Our main job is to educate, but we have our duty of care to ensure students are safe.”

Grainne Hallahan is senior content writer at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 23 April 2021 issue under the headline “How to support responsible student activism”