Over the last several days, it has been hard to stop thinking about the dramatic imperative one of our secondary students shared with me this week: we have to save the frog! He had conveyed this message one lunch period, as I wandered our cafeteria encouraging middle and high schoolers to attend the debate on climate change our Cultural Center was hosting on Thursday evening.
The Lycée Francais de New York is LEED-certified since 2012.
NB. In the second of three distinguished panel discussions on 21st century citizenship taking place during the 2013-14 year, acclaimed journalist and LFNY parent Jeffrey Kluger moderated a dialogue among three world-renowned experts on environmental affairs: Dr. Peter de Menocal, Professor and Chair of the Earth and Environmental Science Department at Columbia University; Mr. David O’Connor, Chief of the Policy and Analysis Branch of the United Nations Division for Sustainable Development; and Mr. Geoffrey Greene, founder of the Arctic expeditionary and preservation organization called Students on Ice. To learn more about the invaluable insights our esteemed guests provided, please do not hesitate to watch the following video.
Talking some sense into the adults in charge
However, the aim of my blog today is not so much to present this remarkable panel, but to evoke the more general challenge which environmental protection poses to all of us who have the privilege of working in schools. For as I walked around the Lycée Français reminding students of Thursday’s discussion, I made sure to begin each conversation by asking them the same question: “what comes to mind when you hear the words ‘climate change.’” And their responses were knowledgeable, caring, defiant.
One replied along the lines of “certain people say there’s no such thing, but scientists disagree. Global warming is definitely taking place. That’s why we have terrible weather conditions like Sandy and Haiyan.” Another affirmed something like: “climate change is the result of what we human beings are doing to the world, but that’s good news because it means we can also reverse the situation.” And a third student, clearly informed of the Warsaw environmental summit occurring in the same timeframe, answered that she herself would have wished to be in Poland, with view to talking some sense into the adults in charge.
Frog in boiling water
It is then that I heard the frog story. We have to get people’s attention, Mr. Lynch, or the planet will be in trouble. Did you know, he continued, that if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it’ll jump right out, but if you put it in a pot full of cold water on a burning flame it’ll be cooked alive? The slow rise in temperature won’t be enough to shock it into reacting and when the water finally does start to boil, it’ll be too late to escape. Are you saying we humans are like a frog in slowly heating water, I asked? Yes, sir, there’s no doubt about it. Why else are we not changing our behavior?
Dear readers, as much as we at the Lycée Français de New York are making every effort to educate our students to care for the environment, by exposing them to nature whenever possible, by managing the school carbon footprint in keeping with the best practices of sustainable development, by supporting student initiatives in areas like recycling and composting, surely there will always be more we can do to save the frog, so to speak. If you have any ideas in this regard, please send them to me and I will happily ensure that they reach our student-led Environmental Task Force.
About the Author :
Sean Lynch was Head of School at the Lycée Français de New York from 2011 to 2018, after having spent 15 years at another French bilingual school outside of Paris: the Lycée International de St. Germain-en-Laye. Holding both French and American nationalities, educated in France (Sciences Po Paris) and the United States (Yale), and as the proud husband of a French-American spouse and father of two French-American daughters, Sean Lynch has spent his entire professional and personal life at the junction between the languages, cultures and educational systems of France and the United States. In addition to being passionate about education, he loves everything related to the mountains, particularly the Parc National du Mercantour.