Fridays for Future Story

So I'll start at the beginning.  Back in the fall of 2018, there was this Swedish kid....Greta Thunberg....who had started in the ninth grade.  She had decided, because of the warmer than usual summer, and the forest fires that had occurred in Sweden in July/August of 2018.....now was the time to push for action against climate change.

So she captivated local attention, quickly via social media, and created what is called today 'Fridays for Future'.  Basically, it's a strike on Fridays after 12-noon.  The kids jumped into this idea....painted up some signs, and walked the news media circle, and attention quickly moved across Sweden.

In recent weeks, it's arrived in Germany.

The school administrator view?  Basically, if you had two hours of lessons developed for a Friday afternoon....then those lessons have been dumped, and the kid is not progressing in the areas that they 'missed'.  If this 'movement' had been for just one single Friday, then no one would really care.  But as you start to progress onto tests, and grading....with unexcused absences blended into the system....you could easily arrive at some chaotic moment in May....where some kids have a problem in progressing onto the next grade.  Pressure upon administrators to just overlook this, and pass the kid anyway?  That's not a trend that German school administrators advocate.

So over the weekend, Chancellor Merkel got into the discussion and more or less....supported the kids and went along with the skipping of classes on Friday.

The hype for the students and their 'theme'?  Well....it's carried by social media more so.....than by the news media.  You can reach out via ten kids with a message, and they pass it on, and within 24 hours, you've got virtually every kid in Sweden connected to the original message.

I pause over the story because with most mass movements....there's a beginning, and an end.  In this case, because of  the truancy involved, and threat of missed hours in school....the end may show up as early as May/June tests are concluded and grades are assigned where you'd typically move onto the next level.  If you come up to some community with 1,000 kids across the various grades, and find that 60 of them don't have the grades or class-time to progress....it'll freak out parents and politicians.

This angle to give the vote down to kids who are sixteen?  Well, this is openly discussed in a number of European countries.  Most are working on the agenda of city and state elections going in this direction, and it's only a matter of time before the EU drafts up some legislation to say the sixteen year old is deemed an adult, and thus gets the vote lowered.

The potential for shadowy figures to get into the movement (into the social media listings) and then create a Thursday morning 'strike' for peace, or a Monday morning one-hour delayed arrival for a 'down-with-Nazism' strike?  It's virtually guaranteed.

All of this created by one single Swedish ninth grader. And it trends to literally several thousand European kids who may not pass onto the next level or grade, because of missed classes and poor grades on tests.