Why Most Teachers Don’t Teach Climate Change
Anya Kamenetz Photo Credit: Will O’Hare.
An NPR poll recently discovered that most teachers don’t teach climate change, yet parents wish they did. To find out more about these findings, we invited NPR education correspondent Anya Kamenetz to the show. Anya joins us to to explain why teachers might not teach climate change, provides a few resources for us to change that behavior, and also challenges parents to have these conversations at home.
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Links:
- Most Teachers Don’t Teach Climate Change; 4 In 5 Parents Wish They Did (NPR)
- 8 Ways To Teach Climate Change In Almost Any Classroom (NPR)
-
NPR LifeKit Podcast: Parenting (New episodes Monday, May 13!)
- anyakamenetz.net
- The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life (Amazon)
- [Wisconsin] DNR purges climate change from web page (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
- NSTA Position Statement: The Teaching of Climate Science
- NCSE (National Center for Science Education)
- Episode 49: Science We Can Listen To (They Might Be Giants)
- Episode 8: The Future of Particle Physics (Don Lincoln)
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Very interesting! I am an 8th grade science teacher and I do teach climate change. An excellent resource I use is JASON Learning’s Climate: Seas of Change. I have helped to align its climate change unit to the Next Generation Science Standards. I find that teaching middle school students the scientific facts is key! I have to admit, if ALL teachers and ALL parents just start teaching about climate change, many children may start forming misconceptions about what is at the heart of climate change issues. We must deal with these issues carefully. It is so important that students analyze graphs of CO2 levels, global temperatures, and world population. We can’t assume students know what the greenhouse effect is. We need to stress the effects of deforestation, raising cattle that burp methane, melting permafrost, and how changing albedo levels affect our temperatures. These ideas must be developed factually and carefully in a way students can understand them. And, yes, students can become depressed after learning all this, so I am very clear with my students when I tell them how much confidence I have in their generation – they are smart, they have the facts, and I have the hope that they will do what needs to be done!