by Jennifer Simpson, Global Learning Practitioner, Educational Researcher and SEEd Member

It may seem incongruous to approach ‘serious’ topics like climate change or inequality with humour; however, I argue that we should do just that. By embracing the power of humour as a pedagogic provocation, we can encourage more authentic engagement with challenging or difficult topics such as climate change and enhance critically mindful sustainable education.

Why Humour?

Humour and comedy play a part in our everyday lives through media or social groups[2], framing our perceptions of the modern world and supporting the formation of our identities[7]. Comedy has several unique qualities which span social, educational and intellectual thinking, engendering a distinctly humanising and collective experience[14,9]. This is especially prominent in relation to education around depressive or daunting topics[14], as it can inject ‘activation energy’[9], boost morale and increase hope[3,14]. It is the very nature of comedy which functions as ‘an attention hook, reflective mirror, political counter narrative, explainer, tool of empowerment, and comic relief’[3] which makes it such a powerful pedagogic tool to question and interrogate the status quo[1].

Headshot of SEEd blog writer, Jennifer Simpson.

Jen Simpson

Why Humour in Sustainability Education?

The advent of Globalisation and progressive technologies has shrunk and diversified our world[4], as well as influenced how we engage with or understand it[1]. Education has a significant and urgent role in supporting learners to navigate this evolving world and critically engage with complex and uncomfortable issues facing humanity, especially around sustainability and climate change[12]. However, education for sustainability, especially in England, often continues to struggle to overcome fundamental barriers to real engagement and action beyond tokenism or tick-boxing[8]. What if humour, especially dark humour, has the potential to capture new and wider audiences? To alter the narrative and engender opportunities for critical thinking and collective action? Could it enhance sustainability education?

In the first instance, comedy can act as an attention hook to capture new audiences and provoke novel thinking[14] around systemic or seemingly distant issues such as climate change. It can elicit an emotional and social response which challenges expected norms, and it is this special ability of comedic juxtaposition that grabs our attention and makes us think and question. For example, Winning questions the logic behind the persistent symbolism of the polar bear stuck on a melting iceberg as the poster-animal for climate change education[13]. If we are aiming to engender significant personal change, the use of an animal icon so far removed from our everyday lives, unless you are a polar bear, seal or live in Alaska, is somewhat redundant. Similar questions arise when the focus is placed on deforestation of distant rainforests or pollution on the Great Barrier Reef, generating a ‘them’ and ‘us’ attitude[13]; the problems are happening to ‘them’ out there, not ‘us’ right here[5]. To overcome this cognitive dissonance, educators need to shift the framing of sustainability issues to begin with the local (you), then move to the global (other), with humorous stimuli such as protest art like CARP18 being a great way to explore issues within the local context.

Humour As A Reflective Mirror

To authentically and critically engage with the complexities and contradictions of this unsustainable world, we need to unlearn[10, 14] some of the assumptions we may have generated about it[1]. Humour, as a Reflective Mirror[3], can present counter-narratives and disrupt assumed knowledge in a more accessible way[1,2]. An example for younger learners could be Class Dismissed Series 6: 9. Complete Wasters[15], which offers a silly but satirical take on education, lampooning the educator-turned-environmental activist, and highlighting the often-repetitious nature of sustainability education. Indeed, it echoes the shift towards mocking the environment movement as ‘targets of ridicule’ alongside easy shots at climate change deniers[3]. This is a reaction to previous environmental movements which have been identified as ‘not only grim but sanctimonious…[coming] across as holier than thou’[9], wonderfully illustrated by this Modern Family[16] clip.

A monkey looks into a car wingmirror.

A Macaque monkey gazing into a mirror – Andre Mouton, Pixabay

Change is not truly engendered through guilt-trips, fear or self-satisfied virtue-signalling by those in positions of privilege[2]. The knowledge-rich, ‘hard facts’ narrative[13] can actively hinder solidarity and produce polarised standpoints of denial or fatalism[2]. Alternatively, comedy can circumnavigate this deadlock, re-frame the messaging to activate ‘emotions of hope and optimism’ as a form of solidarity[2]. Humour acts to subvert the cultural ‘noise and clutter’ or ‘dis-empowering inertia of the status quo’[2]. As Eric Idle recently said ‘good comedy is always an attack – a critique of society’[6], echoing the sentiment of speaking truth to power – though it is more nuanced than that. The audience matters; they decide what is funny and what is not and this reflects norms or perceptions of the society, culture or mindset of the time and particular audience. It is reflexive, multifaceted and changeable, and can reveal more about our understandings, beliefs and values whilst actively challenging them. Indeed, the very nature of comedy is to be creatively responsive to the society within which it exists[2]. As a result, comedians often use humour to ‘poke fun’, challenge dominant narratives or political actions, thereby functioning as a political counter-narrative to push audiences to collectively engage with complex and contradictory issues.

How Humour Can Explain and Empower

Humans are programmed to respond to immediate dangers; therefore, they struggle to be actively responsive to seemingly far-off threats like climate change[13]. Such issues, and their multifaceted solutions, are undoubtedly complex and expansive, though as an Explainer, humour can break these down into more digestible ideas, enabling critical questioning and analysis[7]. For example, utilizing snippets of comedic parody such as Philomena Cunk on Climate Change’s[17] “Moments of Wonder” enables the viewer to spot misinformation, test their own understandings and ask questions about knowledge and the media.

A group of Nepalese students explore a Human Knot exercise on Young Changemakers.

Students at Yangrima School, Nepal, on SEEd’s Young Changemakers untangling a human knot.

Building on this, a key motivator for employing humour as a pedagogic device is its capacity as a tool of empowerment, which can revitalise young people’s opportunities for agency. The reality of agency in an educational context often remains limited to Eco-clubs engaged in by the few, not the many, or mirrors the pious tokenism of previous environmentalist education critiqued by Sachs and Dunbar[9]. A keener approach to activism in education should be to reduce the reactionary ‘doing’ responses and promote a more progressive ‘being’ – as in being curious, critical or questioning[11] – to interrogate the complex systems of which we are all a part. So how can comedy support this shift?

Borum introduced the concept of comedy acting as deviant creative resistance[2], which ‘fosters social change [and] builds civic power’, though I would alter this slightly for our UK educational context and propose humour as a form of Creative Subversive Agency. Using comedy as a provocation stimulus, educators can generate Creative Subversive Agency, which challenges the status quo in subtle, under-the-radar ways through comedic juxtaposition. The aim is to create agentic, braver spaces where young people can generate new narratives rooted in criticality and solidarity[11]. These spaces generate a ‘yes, and…’ attitude[2] which provokes a cumulative mindset focused on inspiring creative and novel ideas.

So, What Next?

In light of this, programmes such as SEEd’s Young Changemakers, which uses a combination of facilitation, systems thinking and futures thinking methods to engage young people in action for sustainability, could harness the potential of humour and Creative Subversive Agency to widen engagement, provoke deep critical dialogue and build collaboration whilst also generating a sense of hope for the future.

Finally, one of humour’s most wonderful and vital roles is comic relief. It releases tension, generates solidarity and hopefulness as well as just making us feel good when times are tough, and that’s true humanity.

 

Jen Simpson

A global learning practitioner and educational researcher with special interests in social justice, learner agency, participatory and socially just research approaches, critical pedagogy, and teacher professional learning. Jen is an experienced teacher, professional development provider and project manager with a range of experience in both mainstream education, higher education and NGO sectors. She has undertaken a number of innovative research projects, starting with the GLP Innovation Fund in conjunction with the Institute of Education, University College London. She has worked as a research assistant at Durham University and a teaching associate at the University of Cumbria, now undertaking a PhD by Publication with the Centre for Global Learning at Coventry University. She continues to explore and engage in innovative participatory educational research and practice. For more, please contact Jen.

Sources and References

  1. Alderman, D. and Popke, E. J. (2002). Humor and film in the geography classroom: learning from Michael Moore’s TV Nation. Journal of Geography 101(6), pp. 228–239
  2. Borum, C. (2023). The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power (Vol. 29). NYU Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.8784634
  3. Borum-Chattoo, C. B., & Feldman, L. (2020). A Comedian and an Activist Walk into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice (1st ed., Vol. 1). University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvwcjht9
  4. Bryan, A, Clarke, M and Drudy, S (2009) ‘A study of student teachers’ social justice and development education’, available: http://www.ubuntu.ie/media/bryan-clarkedrudy-2009.pdf
  5. Geographical Association (2009), A Different View a manifesto from the Geographical Association, GA Manifesto for geography – Geographical Association [accessed Jan 2025]
  6. Idle, E. (2025), ‘Inappropriate? Me? I’ll let the audience decide that’. The i newspaper, Sat 23rd August, p27.
  7. Ridanpää, J (2014) ‘Geographical Studies of Humor’, Geography Compass, Vol 8, Issue 10, pp. 701-709
  8. Rushton, E.A.C, Walshe, N, Johnston, B.J (2025) Towards justice-oriented climate change and sustainability education: Perspectives from school teachers in England. The Curriculum Journal https://doi.org/10.1002/curj.322
  9. Sachs, A and Dunbar, J (2023) ‘Can climate change ever be funny?’, The Climate Question Podcast, 24 Dec 2023, BBC World Service, available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct5bl3 (accessed 1 June 2024).S
  10. Simpson, J (2017) ‘“Learning to Unlearn” the Charity Mentality within Schools’, Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, Vol. 25, Autumn, pp. 88-108.
  11. Simpson, J (2024) ‘Are We All Sitting Uncomfortably? Unlearning the Stories of Social Justice’, Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, Vol. 39, Autumn, pp. 53-71.
  12. The Global Learning Network and Development Education Research Centre, UCL (2025) The Case for Global Learning in the UK Report Full TCfGL – Compressed (August 2025).pdf
  13. Winning, M (2022). Hot Mess: What on earth can we do about climate change? (1st ed), Headline Publisher.
  14. Zembylas, M (2018) ‘Holocaust Laughter and Edgar Hilsenrath’s The Nazi and the Barber: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Laughter and Humor in Holocaust Education’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 301–313.
  15. Class Dismissed (9 Dec 2021), Series 6: 9. Complete Wasters available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00129fd/class-dismissed-series-6-9-complete-wasters (accessed Feb 2025)
  16. Comedy Central Africa (14 July 2023), The Judgy Green Neighbour, available at Modern Family (accessed Jan 2025).
  17. Rolo Tomasi (20 Feb 2015), Philomena Cunk on Climate Change ‘Moments of Wonder’, available at https://youtu.be/4vHjxIoBrUg?si=SBUks1t_VhJPtNnX (accessed Feb 2025)
  18. Stock, A (5 October 2024) Man keeps ‘overly serious’ Chichester on its toes with funny signs, The Argus available at https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/24627422.man-keeps-overly-serious-chichester-toes-funny-signs/ (accessed Feb 2025)