I usually post my reviews of books, music, and film on my personal blog, but the film I watched last night and am about to review seemed a better fit here. For years, I have been actively working with students who are passionate about Global Issues, Social Justice, and student activism. Helping students raise their awareness about the issues we face as a citizens of one shared planet and helping them find ways to effectively spurn action is really the only reason I got into teaching. I am a firm believer that all content and skills no matter the class should have some connection to a better understanding of Global Issues. School should be a place where our curriculum culminates on making life on Earth better for as many people as we can. Forget getting kids ready for college, I want to get them ready to save our lives! We are very to close some pretty scary times, to waste time on anything else would be criminal.  We need this generation and every generation after it to be aware, vocal, and active. If I sound panicked, it is because I am.

I was a bit apprehensive about watching The Age of Stupid. Someone had sent me the link on Twitter a while back, and the film has sat on my hard drive since. I’m not sure if it was the title or the lackluster trailer, but something about it made me feel like it wouldn’t be any good. Last night with my wife out of town, I decided to give it a try and man was I pleasantly surprised.

The blurb from IMDB reads:

This ambitious documentary/drama/animation hybrid stars Pete Postlethwaite as an archivist in the devastated world of the future, asking the question: “Why didn’t we stop climate change when we still had the chance?” He looks back on footage of real people around the world in the years leading up to 2015 before runaway climate change took place.

Wikipedia says

Amid news reports of the gathering effects of climate change  and global civilisation teetering towards destruction, he alights on six stories of individuals whose lives in the early years of the 21st century seem to illustrate aspects of the impending catastrophe. These six stories take the form of interweaving documentary segments that report on the lives of real people in the present, and switch the film’s narrative form from fiction to fact. The people who feature are:

Al Duvernay, a resident of New Orleans who stayed behind and helped in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. He reflects on what it feels like to have had all his possessions washed away in the flood, and also on his job in the oil industry and how valuable resources are being wasted.

Indian businessman Jehangir Wadia, who talks about the start-up of his low cost airline GoAir and his democratic vision of a world in which all people, rich and poor, are able to afford air travel.

Two Iraqi children, Jamila and Adnan, who fled with their family to Jordan during the Iraq War, who tell the story of their father’s death and of their desire to be reunited with the older brother they left behind.

Fernand Pareau, an 82-year-old man who works as a guide on the Mont Blanc glacier in France – he takes an English family on a tour of the glacier and explains how he has seen the ice recede massively in his lifetime. The guide is also shown taking action against expanding road infrastructure in his area.

Wind-farm developer, Piers Guy who talks about his efforts to bring sustainable energy to an English village, and how he is being blocked by people who profess a commitment to fighting global warming but do not want wind turbines destroying their views. His family takes action in reducing their carbon footprint and contemplate the effects of air travel.

Layefa Malemi, a Nigerian woman who struggles with poverty despite the wealth of oil in her country. She talks about her ambition to study medicine and the everyday impact of the exploitation of oil by Shell Nigeria on health, security and the environment in Nigeria.

These glimpses into the lives of a disparate group of people all affected by the oil industry are a perfect backdrop to the main message of the film. Which are: that it highlights the fundamental causes that have brought us to where we are as a species- A species that is rapidly destroying its own habitat. One of the most frustrating factors about working with young people who want to learn about global issues is that we rarely dig deep enough to truly understand the core causes that connect so many issues like climate change, poverty conflict etc…

We work on projects to educate students about recycling and green living, or maybe discuss the state of a world where most people live on a dollar a day, but at the end of the day most students, as least the ones I work with, will return to their world of blind consumerism that has been drilled into them since birth by the ever expanding global free market, because they are never asked to really look at the source of the problems. It is one thing to lead a recycling program at a school or help build schools in Africa, but no sustainable change, not the kind we need to save us from extinction, will come from such surface level actions without true understanding.

We need to help kids look deeply at why the world’s wealth is horded by a small number of its citizens, while so many people suffer. We cannot be afraid to examine concepts like colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. We cannot expect a student to understand why Africa is “always so messed up,” without understanding the rape of the continent by European countries centuries ago. Student can never understand the root causes of terrorism and conflicts in the Middle East without having a basic understanding of imperialism and the implications of fossil fuels on the world’s military powerhouse’s need for it.

One site I recently found that does a great job of helping kids look beyond simple living green platitudes is Dropping Knowledge. Covering a range of ideas from gender equality to animal rights, the site does not shy away from asking questions that most teachers would avoid, and the best part is that student asks the questions themselves.  If you really want a deep and robust Global Issues program I suggest you have your students take the time to ponder a few of them.

Back to the film. The Age of Stupid does a great job of getting to the source of many of our problems. White its focus is on the effects of climate change, there are a few animated segments that highlight the concepts I mentioned earlier. Cause of the perfect length and simplicity, I highly recommend you use them with students as discussion starters. This clip highlights how nearly all human conflicts have been a result of human beings’ need for resources, played perfectly over the backdrop of colonialism and imperialism, it subtly segues into the role of oil in current conflicts.

This clip could lead to great discussions about how the world’s imperialistic need for resources and control is not something we simply study in history, but that this lust for goods is the source of our problems today.

The second clip illustrates how our casual attitude toward consumerism stems from the impetus of the same capitalistic motives. The clip does not shy away from putting capitalism in the spotlight and questioning how we are expected to understand a system that is based on infinite growth using finite resources. That very question, alone,  could lead to some intense discoveries for young people.

They are told everyday, everywhere they look that there is one system that epitomizes progress, and this system demands that they must consume to be successful. It must be our goal as Global Issues facilitators to not only change how they act by doing futile recycling drives, but how they think about their own roles as consumers and global citizens. We must allow young people to consider alternative economic systems and ways of life. Before I get a rash of comments telling me that Stalin and Mao didn’t work, and the free market system is the best we can do, let me say, “I get it.” I am not championing communism here. I am saying that we must have a completely new system. New ways of thinking. We cannot continue to believe that we will survive within a system that demands progress and growth as if we have infinite resources. We need today’s young people to help us, and they cannot if the do not understand the past and are blinded by the false hype of capitalism. It cannot be considered blasphemy to criticize and examine a system that is in crisis. A system that is literally leading us to extinction. Now is the time.

The Age of Stupid reminds us that we are headed for some dark times. It also points out the terrible suffering endured by many of the planet’s citizens so that we can live in the comfort and ease we have come to expect in the “developed” world. Nothing will change until young people are exposed to the underlying causes of our planet in collapse. This film is a great first step to getting them to think about these causes.