Game of Thrones is perhaps best enjoyed as high-end schlock, a barrage of viscera, sex and convoluted storylines that you should let wash over you rather than analyse too closely for meaning. Advice, of course, that is roundly ignored, as you can see from the feverish outpouring of below-the-line comments any time a newspaper publishes something - anything - on the latest developments from Westeros.

But maybe there is a message lurking in there for our times.

For those of you not in the know: the protagonists are so embroiled in squabbles and skulduggery in their pursuit of power that they somehow miss that none of this matters, because an unstoppable army of ice zombies is going to kill everybody anyway.

Which seems apt in these times, when Brexit negotiations and Donald Trump’s bizarre presidency dominate news agendas while David Attenborough and others hammer (metaphorically and literally) on the glass of political chambers and newsrooms, like Dustin Hoffman at the end of The Graduate. The airtime given to the climate protests in London this month, and the recent strikes by schoolchildren, suggest that the possibility of environmental disaster may be focusing minds belatedly, but the deteriorating state of the planet can still slip quickly out of news cycles.

Schools are, in many ways, microcosms of the wider world’s preoccupations. At primary school in the 1980s, our P5 class did a project on “ecology”, but it lasted a few unmemorable weeks, seemed dull in comparison with other projects and was less of a priority than fractions and sentence constructions. But is the environment any more prominent in classrooms in 2019?

We have reported teachers’ fears about discussing topical issues such as Scottish independence and Brexit (bit.ly/SimeTess) because this might appear too “political”, regardless of students’ interest in such topics and the lasting impact they might have on their lives. There is little reason to doubt that those same fears would prevent many teachers encouraging full and frank debates about climate change.

“Citizenship”, meanwhile, seems like a fuzzy add-on, while pupil voice - as we explored recently (bit.ly/PupilVoiceTess) - is still, in many cases, a rather tokenistic concept: how many schools can truly say that they encourage young people to make a meaningful difference to how their school operates? More generally, whatever the high-minded ideals of Curriculum for Excellence, has it really encouraged a generation to see that there are things that matter beyond their looming exams?

There are many fantastic teachers out there, encouraging debate, prompting original thought, unfurling a vista far beyond the confines of the classroom, but the system they work within still often appears troublingly myopic.

As so often, it is a new generation, with that clarity of youth, that may make us all reset our priorities. The 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has become the figurehead for a new movement, but there are countless teens like her, fed up with what they see as the lacklustre attempts of adults to get to grips with climate change.

In Game of Thrones, most characters have finally woken up to the inexorable march of the White Walkers (to give those zombies their proper name), but it may be too late. Not so climate change: Thunberg and her ilk insist there is still time for us to act.

And the education system can help. It often becomes mired in arcane arguments about curriculum design, attainment levels and pedagogical trends, reducing students to passive reams of data. Now, more than ever, educators must help students to project their voices - in and out of the classroom.

@Henry_Hepburn

This article originally appeared in the 26 April 2019 issue under the headline “No more excuses: we must talk about climate change in schools”