These goals have a relationship with you, me, the land you live in, the water you drink, and every person you come into contact with.
In 2015, 193 world leaders put their heads together and said,
"What's the world coming to? We have to do something. If we are able to do this, we can do it only together, together with the children, the teachers, the businessmen, the presidents, the people on the street. But where should we start?".
They started by setting 17 goals in order to find solutions to worldly problems such as hunger, poverty, pollution, inequality and injustice, and said, "Let's try to find solutions to these until 2023". Indeed, they are trying, we are trying, is it possible or not, it is a separate case, but trying is half of success.
Now I will tell you about one of these examples;
In order to achieve these goals, some schools around the world have built their curriculum on these goals. I had the chance to visit one of these schools while I was in Sweden. The name of the school was "Globala Gymnasiet". When I entered the school, which looked very ordinary from the outside, I understood its difference. Unlike the normal classroom layout, the classes were designed in a way suitable for group work, and each class had its own separate study room.
When we entered the school, they were studying and from the corner of my eye, the students were not locked to the teacher, facing the blackboard as we were, and some were focused on their laptops and some were talking to each other. As a result of my first impression, I made a comparison that would not suit an educator and generalized by being overly prejudiced and saying, "Oh, look at Swedish teenagers! They are worse than ours. While the teacher is in the classroom, they deal with their laptops and cell phones and chat with each other". However, when Sofie Abrahamsson, the principal of the world's school, came before us as a teacher rather than a principal, and told her about her school, I immediately scolded my previous thoughts and threw them back to the place where they came out. It turned out that in the past years, two idealistic teachers aimed to gather adolescent minds to realize SDG goals and opened a high school in the center of Stockholm.
Using the imagination and creativity of childhood, the reality and logic of adulthood, these two female principals, who are aware of the fact that adolescence is the period when the brain works the most, gave young people the greatest opportunity they could give to 'save the world'.
Mathematics, history, religion, language, physics etc. in their curricula as in ours. Of course there is, but the time allocated to projects is much larger. Thanks to these projects, students know how to do research, how to act solution-oriented, cooperation, and most importantly, the cause-effect relationship, and they know that they are studying to make the world they live in a better place, and they strive for this.
It is not easy to enter this school alone. Students applying to the school must present a worldly problem and come up with a solution to it. The school offers three main categories: social sciences, computational sciences and arts. After the students are selected as a result of the problems and solutions they present, they have to produce at least one project each semester and one major project during their high school education. All of these projects should serve the SDG. By the way, there are some conditions imposed on the teachers of this school, such as doing research, which in certain parts of the school, as in the Chronicles of Narnia, there are doors opening to another world, laboratories or collective work areas after a door.
I met two of the students who will graduate this year, behind one of these doors, with their hands in the solid, while weeding out roots from a container. Turned out they had been in the final stages of their project and Sweden's biggest laboratory would be waiting for them after they graduated. You ask why? Because the project they started in the 9th grade bloomed and they are now well-known names in the field of science. Thanks to a bacterium they brought from China, they found natural fertilizer production as a result of their curiosity and determination.
While I was there, I felt pity for our young people and was very upset that they did not have such opportunities. But now, especially after I wrote "Turkish Education System Through the Eyes of High School Students", I don't think so anymore. We may not be able to open a school that can serve a worldly purpose due to some financial and political impossibilities, but we can direct our youth to achieve these goals. There are many course contents on this subject that have been made and applied abroad. I leave the links in the "bibliography" section. I believe in the necessity of being aware of the Sustainable Development Goals and doing our part as individuals, not only as a lesson, but also as people living on this planet.
What do you think? Can we start? Can we prolong the life of our world?
Kaynakça: 1. You can start from here to teach the goals from here