Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning (Jun 2021)
Doctor Stockmann and Greta Thunberg: Some Implications of Intellectual Resistance, Eco-activism and Unschooling
Abstract
This paper ascertains how Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and Doctor Stockmann of HenrikIbsen’s play "An Enemy of the People" (1882) represent an intellectual activism in two different contexts of world realities. Greta (2003), a Swedish teenager, single handedly embarks on a “School Strike for Climate” (SSC) in August, 2018 (Swedish:Skolstrejk för klimatet), which subsequently develops into a global movement being broadly labelled as “Fridays for Future” (FFF). She has now spearheaded this strike towards a worldwide climate movement. She has thus forged her identity as an eco-intellectual or climate activist but endured the backlashes and controversies of the development pedagogues and totalitarian world leaders. On the other hand, Doctor Stockmann, an alter ego of Henrik Ibsen, functions beyond his own profession to serve his intellectual responsibility. He detects fatal infection in the spa of the fictional city which garners a substantial financial sustenance for the city. He strives to disclose the diagnosis of bacterial contamination to avoid the health and economic hazards of his locale. But in so doing, he is converted into a foe of the city and finally forced to go for a social estrangement by the city mayoral administration. This paper concentrates also on all the socio-ethico-political compulsions, which pose threatening inhibitions to Dr. Stockmann but lead him to evolve himself into an intellectual rebel. By exploring these two contextual instances of intellectual activism and confrontation, this paper also locates Greta and Stockmann within a broader spectrum of eco-ethical resistance that can designate them as a thematic content in the unschooling learning spaces. This paper hinges on Greta in a particular light by presenting Greta’s resistance as a call for re-visioning the societal ideologies on children and their relationship to environmental consciousness.
