Teaching Climate Change in Schools

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, our climate story of the week. It's about climate misinformation in American classrooms. The topic of a recent book from investigative reporter, Katie Worth aptly titled Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught in America.

This week our climate story also comes from the Luca Cantagallo Climate Crisis podcast. IndyKids is a nonprofit organization that produces news by and for kids. Luca Cantagallo, a seventh grader from Queens and a student reporter for IndyKids sat down with Katie to talk about her book and the way climate denialism got into textbooks and classrooms in much of the country. Listen.

Luca Cantagallo: Well, I don't understand. What I'm actually really curious about is like, why would people teach kids climate denialism?

Katie Worth: It's a really good question too. You're good at this. I wonder the same thing. What I've come to believe is that there's just so much money riding on this. If you can get just a portion of the population to not believe in climate change, then there's no action taken. You're not going to overhaul the entire economy, the entire world if you're not totally sure that it's worth it.

Brian: After that clip from the student interview, Luca and Katie, welcome to WNYC.

Luca: Thank you.

Katie: Really glad to be here.

Brian: Luca, I will second Katie's thought there. You seem to be good at this from at least that sampling of your question. What did you set out to learn from your interview with Katie or from her book?

Luca: Well, I really wanted to learn more about Katie's work and about the misinformation being spread about climate change in the school system throughout the world.

Brian: Do you have an example of what stuck with you about climate misinformation as it's being taught in school? Did anybody ever teach you what you would call climate misinformation?

Luca: Well, I remember in our interview we were talking about how one teacher was doing a segment about how you can get a very well-paying job in oil and how it can set you up. They didn't actually ever talk about anything about like how climate change and harvesting oil can actually hurt the environment, how teachers are teaching climate change as a debate in school, which it shouldn't be taught as a debate because it's not a debatable topic. It's a fact that climate change is going on.

Brian: All right. Katie, did you want to jump in there?

Katie: Yes. Luca has it just right. We know that about a third of teachers teach climate change as a debate. As Luca said, it's not something that scientists debate. A lot of teachers just don't teach it at all. I remember asking Luca in our original interview if he had ever been learned about it himself. I believe he said that he hadn't yet. Is that still right, Luca?

Luca: Yes. I really haven't learned much about it, small segments from teachers and students, but we never really had any designated lesson to actually learn about climate change.

Brian: Listeners, parents and educators, we are doing this during a week off from school for a lot of you, so teachers can call in. How do you talk to your kids or students about climate change and the climate crisis? If there happen to be any kids listening of any age, you are also very welcome to call in, help our guests report this story. Where do you learn about the emergency? How much does it come up in class teachers? How do you, if you're not science teachers, even if you are, learn enough about the relevant science to teach it accurately enough to kids of different ages?

Let's hear about how climate change is getting addressed in your classroom or others that of. 212-433 WNYC 211-243-396-92, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Katie, there are stories in conservative media that are the opposite take. I wonder if you've run across them and want to critique them at all. They run along the lines of our kids are being indoctrinated in school to believe that there is a climate crisis that will require we kick off fossil fuels and that American capitalism is bad. They're seeing misinformation, or at least biased information with an agenda from another direction. How'd you respond to that based on your research on what's being taught?

Katie: Well, what's interesting to me and what was interesting to me as I researched for this book is the degree to which adult politics have infiltrated education. That's a really ideological stance that you're describing. Ideally, we would give our kids just information without a lot of ideology. I think most scientists would agree that climate change is just information.

Just learning a little bit about what it is, why it's happening and what might be done to stop it is just information and is not any ideological brainwashing or trying to inject any politics into schools because it's just the truth. It's a reality that's happening and we owe our kids a little bit of information about it.

Brian: When you said one of the sources of misinformation, one of the kinds of misinformation is presenting climate change to students as a debate, are there degrees of that? If they're presenting as a debate, "is manmade climate change real?" well, that would be misinformation. If they're presenting debates like "how quickly is climate change progressing, and what are the relative costs to humanity of addressing it in one way or another? What sacrifices for what gains?" that those are legitimate debates with some nuance that should be addressed as debates?

Katie: Yes, absolutely. Having students debate things in classes is good pedagogy. It makes them think critically about something and form their own opinions about things and learn. It's like having students debate whether climate change is happening or why it's happening is like having kids debate whether cigarettes cause cancer. If you had kids debating whether cigarettes cause cancer, some might walk away thinking, "Well, we don't know whether they cause cancer or not." You could have them debate, should they be regulated? Should we prevent cigarettes from being smoked in public places? That's a legitimate- that's a sociological debate that you could have students engage in.

In the same way, you can have students engage in like, well, what should we do, if anything, about this crisis? That's a legitimate debate. Unfortunately, a lot of the debates are presenting it as though the science is not conclusive about whether it's happening or why it's happening.

Brian: Luca, you ask a really poignant question in your interview with Katie for indicates about links between the ban on critical race theory and the types of climate denialism that sometimes get taught in the classroom. Why in your mind are those two things linked?

Luca: Well, I think it's coming from the same people. It's both in the school systems, and mostly down in the same places where parents don't want their kids to learn about the climate crisis and about critical race theory because it in some ways criminalizes the people that it talks about. Even though it's not inherently, even though [unintelligible 00:09:17] isn't inherently calling white people racist, it is like pointing out that people in history have done things that aren't good. It's just teaching another point of view.

Like Katie said, climate denialism quite literally boosts the economy, so it would make sense that they don't want their kids to learn about it.

Brian: Luca, for you as a seventh grader, do you talk about climate with your friends or your classmates? Obviously, you to some degree because you did this interview with Katie who wrote a book on the topic for your work with IndyKids, but do you feel ever like your generation is educating your parents on this? What kind of generational conversations, intergenerational conversations are you or anyone else you know having, if any?

Luca: Well, I don't really see many of my classmates, or if they do, talk to their parents about climate change. I don't really see it happening, but we do-- I have shared my podcast with the class what we learned, and they had learned about it. A lot of them really had no clue about climate denialism being taught in schools and the miseducation happening. A lot of the kids in my school don't know much about climate change. I could assume that they don't talk to their parents about it.

Brian: Yes. Katie, I wonder what you found as you were researching your book on climate misinformation in classrooms around the country. Are the parents more educating the kids? Take the teachers out of it for a minute. Are the parents more educating the kids, or are the kids more educating the parents at this point?

Katie Worth: There's a really interesting study in North Carolina where they tracked students, young people who are learning about climate change, and then they interviewed their families before and after their children were going through this lesson. What they found was parents were more concerned about climate change after their children had learned about it in school because, of course, kids come home, they talk about it over dinner. They have questions about it, and they turn to the people they trust most, their parents.

This effect was strongest in conservative families. Between daughters and their fathers, actually, was the strongest effect that they found. There is something powerful about teaching children about climate change. It does have an intergenerational effect.

Brian: Let's take a phone call. Teachers, you are welcome to call in. Again, we're having this particular climate story of the week, which we now do every Tuesday on the Brian Show during this week off from school for a lot of you. Teachers, how do you bring climate change into the classroom? How do you bring it into science class if you're a science teacher? How do you bring it into social studies if you're a social studies teacher? How do you bring it into the lower grades if you teach elementary school, and you have to teach everything? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Jennifer, in Long Beach, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jennifer. Thanks for calling in.

Jennifer: You're welcome. It's good to be on. Thank you.

Brian: What would you like to tell us? You're a teacher, I see?

Jennifer: Oh, sorry [chuckles].

Brian: You called me.

Jennifer: I did. What was I thinking?

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Jennifer: I teach AP Human Geography. We just finished watching The Island President, which is the documentary about the former elected president of the Maldives, who attempted to convince people at the Copenhagen Summit that he wanted to save his planet, and then more specifically, his own country. The kids and I take a look at that film, and we take a look at the naysayers in that film, China, for one, India for one, and sometimes the US, obviously. We debate why they would not want to save the planet, when in fact, New York is at the same sea level as the capital of the Maldives, and what happens to them happens to us.

Those kinds of things, we definitely talked about in class, because that's what's being talked about in the world. It's my job as a teacher to help them understand why there are doubters, and what the truth is, and how we evaluate the media to find out what is "fake news" and what is real news. That's what we do in my class around climate debate, and the role of human beings in understanding and preventing it, or fixing it at the very least.

Brian: Jennifer, thank you very, very much for your call. We appreciate it a lot.

Jennifer: You're welcome.

Brian: Katie, she mentioned the Maldives, which we've, of course, talked about on the show with respect to climate change. Their leader, as she says, has been so outspoken on the issue because they are so vulnerable. It seemed to me that one of the opportunities that climate change presents as a topic in education is to have a hook to teach American kids about places elsewhere in the world that might seem kind of remote to them, the North world versus the south world, and relative vulnerabilities, and relative wealth and all those things. You write about this in your book, right?

Katie Worth: I do, yes. It's important to note that kids in every community will be affected or are already being affected by climate change. It's not just something that's happening in the Maldives. As your caller mentioned, New York City is at the same elevation. You don't have to go very far to find examples of how climate change is already affecting our lives. That said, of course, some places are much more vulnerable than others, just by the fact of their resources to defend themselves and to recover after these disasters.

As I told Luca in our first interview, I got interested in this story because I was in the Marshall Islands covering a story about climate change. I was talking to the kids there. They were really fluent about climate change, its causes, its effects, its solutions in a way that most adults that I know here are not. The Marshallese, a couple of the kids I was talking to, were considering moving to Oklahoma. I was curious, what would they learn in Oklahoma about climate change if they were to move there, and that was one of the origin stories of my book.

Brian: Donna, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Donna.

Donna: Hey. It's good to be on. I am a third-grade teacher. I've been teaching third grade for about seven years now. Teaching climate change has always been one of those really tricky things, firstly, because elementary school, we have to teach all the subjects. In teaching all the subjects, there's little to no time to be able to like specifically teach lessons on climate change.

What I've found particularly helpful is while teaching social studies, and teaching geography, and kids are learning about weather and making the distinction between weather and climate, that's when I've been able to start talking about how climate has been shifting over the past few decades. Kids see what's happening on the news, they see what's happening in California, they see what's happening, and bringing that into the classroom and talking about it.

One of the things I actually have a question about is, how do you approach teaching climate change to young students like kindergarten, first grade, second grade, without having this overarching feeling of doom and gloom and the future is in jeopardy? The thing is, the kids just start thinking about what their future is going to be like when they're seeing all of this happening. That's something that I particularly have a tough time with my eight-year-olds.

Brian: What do you hear back from them? How do you mitigate that or navigate it?

Donna: With my students has been trying to be optimistic, of like, but we can change it, we can do something, but then when other students hear "Oh, but we have until 2050," because they have discussions with their parents and some of the parents are very attuned to this. It becomes tricky because now I have students that are now concerned about living or dying, rather than thinking about the overarching, "Oh, there's climate change, what can we do to mitigate it?" I'm teaching seven- eight-year-olds, so big feelings come quickly.

Brian: Thank you, Donna. Thank you very much. Luca, as a seventh grader, I wonder what you were thinking as you heard that. If you relate to that, as you become interested in the subject, do you have a sense of doom and gloom about the future of the Earth that you're going to grow up and be an adult on? Or more optimism that, "Hey, my generation can grow up and make things right"? How heavy a weight is this for you, if it is?

Luca Cantagallo: Yes and no. On one hand, I know it's very possible and not likely, but it's possible that we could reverse climate change, or at least slow it down. On the other hand, even this past winter, it's been quite warm, and that's concerning especially because it's in a significant enough way for it to be noticeable. We have studies that show what the world might look like in 50 years, but there's no 100% way of knowing and that's scary, but then I also know we can take steps to change or slow climate change down.

Brian: Interesting. Katie, how do you deal with that in your book about how climate change is taught in America? We've done segments in this series on how some significant percentage of young adults today are even asking themselves whether they want to have kids, because of what they think the climate change future is going to be on this planet. Where does teaching the science and teaching the sociology of it intersect with what kind of outlook you're giving children on the future?

Katie: Well, there are developmentally appropriate ways to talk to kids about it. As your last caller was just talking about, it sounds like she's really nailed it. At every level, it's really important to let kids know that there are solutions to this, that the future isn't written yet, and we are making progress on it and we can do much more.

Another thing that I was told by teachers is that they have stopped trying to get students to make individual decisions, to ride their bike to school, or to eat vegan or something, and instead have focused students on collective action. That tends to leave students much more hopeful than just working on their own on an issue like this.

Brian: One more call. Rose in Westchester, a science teacher, I see. Hi, Rose. You're on WNYC.

Rose: Hi. Can you hear me?

Brian: I can hear you.

Rose: Okay, great. This is a great topic, especially in today's education. I have an environmental science background and I work with science teachers to do professional development. At the time that I was performing this service, science teachers, anyway, are segmented into their various categories of geology, earth science, chemistry, physics. There was not a lot of crossover so I was able to bring through professional development more courses on native plants on the Bronx Zoo on areas that crossed over that were a lot more exciting for students.

That's happening now in terms of research that students are taking on science research. I would say science teachers do a good job of explaining science in terms of what the facts are that they have, but it can be, in the early grades, very confusing for students. I wanted to mention something that I guess I would call the chilling effect.

A school district that I am familiar with had an Earth Day celebration some years ago, and the students made celebrations. They went out on the campus, they made masks, and did a great program. Later, parents found out about this, and they were upset. They were accusing the school of things like Satanism, anti-Christian theories, and the school was literally sued for this day.

I can tell you that that has a chilling effect on teachers. They are not going to put themselves out even in today's climate. Parents are coming to talk about COVID vaccines and debating on whether their kids should do that. Politics is definitely entering the educational--

Brian: Thank you for that, Rose. Let me get one last thought from Katie on that. Katie, one of the things you address in your book that I think is relevant to the call that we just had is how climate denialism goes from fossil fuels companies to the classrooms and textbooks to create the kind of political environment that the science teacher from Westchester was calling in about.

Katie: My reporting led me to look at a lot of efforts over the last several decades by fossil fuel companies to push their perspective into education. They've done it that in a lot of ways. In some states, there are members of the fossil fuel industry that go classroom to classroom and give presentations to the kids about the industry. They've gotten their messages into textbooks. They fought in Texas, the oil industry fought a new educational standard that would have taught seventh graders about climate change, and solutions.

This is not something that has happened by accident. It's important to remember that there's been an intentional disinformation campaign about climate change. It's really tragic that it's affecting children that these adult politics are finding their way into children's classrooms.

Brian: Luca, I'm going to give you the last word in the segment. If you've just joined us recently, our guest for our climate study of the week this week has been Katie Worth, author of Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught in America, and Luca Cantagallo, a seventh grader from Queens and a student reporter for the group IndyKids who interviewed Katie about her book. We played a clip.

Luca, I'm going to tell people in a minute how they can hear your full interview with Katie because it's so cool that you did this and did such a good job. Just curious, at 12 years old, do you know what you want to be when you grow up professionally?

Luca: Honestly, I have no clue. I'm leaning towards something about the science side, but I haven't landed on anything yet.

Brian: Well, you have plenty of time to figure it out, but good job on the science side with this. We will have a link to Luca's full interview with Katie for the IndyKids Climate Crisis Podcast. On our web page, go to WNYC.org and click on Brian Show. Luca Cantagallo and Katie Worth, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been great.

Katie: Thank you for having us.

 

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