Kids shortchanged when subject is climate change

(Photo of book one teacher used to try to understand the complex issue of climate change from Flickr and photographer runswithscissors/Ken)

Weekly Angst: One of the state legislatures just passed a law adding climate change to the scientific topics that must be taught in public schools. Then the governor of the state, (drum roll, please) Arnold Schwarzenegger, vetoed it. What was THAT about?

The Governator said he opposed attempts to mandate “specific details or events into areas of instruction, ” but state Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), the bill’s sponsor, denied that the bill “specified exactly how climate change would be taught and would simply have added to 7 others topics the state already requires – issues of such overwhelming importance as "integrated pest management."

Cynthia Thomashow, president of the Center for Environmental Education at Maine’s Unity College, told ClimateWire she suspects adding global warming and the human causes of it is tough for some politicians to swallow. “It means we have to change.”

Thomashow estimates 20-30% of elementary school students in America learn about climate change in any comprehensive way, and maybe 40% of high school students.

There’s not much help from text books. Three top companies, McGraw-Hill, Pearson Prentice Hall and Houghton Mifflin, cover it only in a vague, passing way. And with no emphasis on testing for lessons learned it gets little attention unless teachers or department chairs take the lead.

John Whitsett, president of the National Science Teachers Assn., notes that textbook companies are in business to sell books and “some parts of the country aren’t interested in teaching climate change.”

It was Whitsett’s organization that in 2006 refused to help distribute 50,000 free copies of “An Inconvenient Truth” to schools. He himself told ClimateWire, “We should be teaching the fundamentals of climate, not necessarily this topic.”

The state of California buys about 12% of the nation’s textbook. A change in policy from them could have made a difference in what textbook companies do. But California wasn’t ready to make the leap, so what chance is there with states that won’t teach evolution?

Maybe all is not lost. Textbooks do tend to be out-of-date. It could get 5 degrees hotter before they get it right. But I’m not sure kids pay all that much attention to books now anyway. They’re into movies, TV, videogames and iPods. So we need other tools to teach them what we’re doing to their world and what life will be like when they’re grown up. “An Inconvenient Truth” would have been a good start.

Several government agencies and non-profits are working on materials and curricula of their own.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration unveiled a slick new brochure this spring called “Climate Literacy: The Essentials of Climate Science.” It’s for adults too – something to educate the public about the calamity facing us. But NOAA wants to get the brochures into schools too. So far, it’s distributed just 27,000 copies – that’s less than 1% of the nation’s science teachers. So they’ve got a long way to go. Both NOAA and NASA have grant programs to encourage innovative approaches to teaching climate change.

The non-profit National Wildlife Federation is also working on a booklet and lesson plans. And of course there are plenty of resources on the Internet. One of the best appears to be climatechangeeducation.org.

It looks as if it will be up to teachers and parents to push for our children to be properly educated about this issue. Clearly we can’t leave it to the bureaucracy. Teach climate change at home but also push to get information into the schools. Some people’s children won’t get it at home.
(Special thanks to ClimateWire and reporter Lydia DePillis, the main source for this posting)