Media questions Flashcards
(29 cards)
Title? (Why is the book called Miseducation?)
I wanted to know what kids were learning in American schools about climate change, so I started talking to teachers, students, parents, administrators; I read dozens of textbooks, I built a fifty-state database. And all of that reporting led to the conclusion that lots of American kids are learning climate denial in class, even though in many cases their lives are already being shaped by the climate crisis. Miseducation is about how that happened and why it matters.
I wanted to know what kids were learning
Talked to teachers, students, parents administrators. Textbooks. Database.
Turns out lots of kids learning climate denial
Even though already harmed by cc
Miseducation is about how it happened and why it matters.
What’s your book about? 15 second answer
Miseducation is about how lots of kids are learning climate denial in class, even though in many cases their lives are already being touched by the climate crisis. The book is about how that happened, and why it matters.
What’s your book about? 30 second answer
I wanted to know what kids were learning in American schools about climate change, so I started talking to teachers, students, parents, administrators. I read dozens of textbooks and built a fifty-state database. And all of reporting that led to the conclusion that lots of American kids are learning climate denial in class, even though in many cases their lives are already being shaped by the climate crisis. Miseducation is about how that happened, and why it matters.
What’s your book about? 45-60 second answer
wanted to know what kids were learning in school about climate change, because it’s the issue that will define the century they were born into. So I read dozens of textbooks, built a fifty-state database, and talked to teachers, students, parents, administrators all over the country.
What I found was first of all, there’s a lot of tension over this issue. Teachers are disagreeing with administrators, parents are mad that their kids are either learning it or not learning it. Students are pushing back. This is a big issue in science classrooms.
And second, I found a real divide in what’s taught. In some places, kids are getting a really robust education about it. In other places, kids are getting either no education about it – they never hear the words climate change on school grounds – or they actually learn climate denial in class.
So Miseducation is about how that happened, and why it matters.
Why now?
The climate crisis is already here. And these kids have the most at stake out of all of us. It’s an issue that will be extremely relevant to their lives, and it’s important to know what they’re learning about it.
why you?
When I was a reporter at FRONTLINE I was assigned to a climate change story out of the Marshall Islands. And when we were there, we were just amazed by how knowledgeable the kids there were about climate change. So that led me to wonder, what are American kids learning about this issue?
why write?
This story was initially going to be a magazine article, but the more reporting I did, the more fascinating it got. It seemed so important that it was worthy of a book.
Main Messages
There’s a lot of tension in schools over this issue.
I found a substantial red-blue divide on the issue.
Adult politics have inserted themselves into public schools.
This didn’t happen by accident.
Kids have most at stake
It might surprise people to know
What I found was
Facts/numbers - kids, time, teachers, scientists
A quarter of American kids ages 14-17 rejected the idea that climate change is a crisis. Which is of course a smaller proportion than their elders. But it’s still significant.
Science teachers spend an average of just 1-2 hours on climate change in the entire school year.
A third of teachers say they tell their students that “many scientists believe” that climate change is natural.
A recent count found 100 percent agreement among scientists who were publishing peer-reviewed studies that humans are warming the earth.
Textbooks – What’s in them?
And why?
What’s in them?
Often have good information
But also often undermined by doubtful language
e.g. one textbook I looked at, in a quarter of all classrooms.
Many scientists believe that humans, SOME believed.
Textbooks are supposed to be the authority, so of course kids trust them. T
Why?
Because it’s a business. They’re contending with market forces.
They’re trying to be vague not because they think it’s the truth but because they’re worried about their textbooks being rejected in states like Texas and Florida.
What’s happening NOW is there are two tiers of textbooks. One that is sold in places like California, and one that’s sold in places like Texas.
Who’s the bad guy? Who’s to blame?
It’s a mix of things.
Local politics. Right wing message machine. Investments by fossil fuel companies. The cautiousness of textbook companies.
There are some organizations that are out there intentionally pushing doubt.
One thinktank in Chicago sent a book pushing climate denialism to something like 200,000 science teachers.
What do ff have to do with it.
This has been going on for a long time.
In 1998, there was a meeting hosted byt he American Petroleum Institute, attended by Exxon, Chevron and some coal companies. A leaked memo out fo that meeting said that “Victory will be achieved when the public ‘understands’ the uncertainties in climate science.’
One of the tactics they specifically discuss is reaching out to kids. THey wrote that this was necessary to “erect a barrier” against regulation of their industry.
And they did that.
They worked with the NSTA
Created ab unch of curriculum that had skeptical messaging.
Who’s funding
Like a lot of money trails, this one is murky. Deliberately secretive about it.
But it’s been well reported that the fossil fuel industry long supported climate denial campaign, even though their own scientists were telling them that it was real.
Arkansas oil rep
I was sitting in a seventh grade classroom in Arkansas when an representative of the Arkansas oil and gas industry association
Arkansas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners
walked in.
She was there to talk to the 7th graders
Her presentation was about fossi fuels and how important they were.
But she also told students that they didn’t need to worry about climate change.
She ran a program called “Arkansas Energy Rocks!” Pencils. Curricular materials.
Paradise
I talked to a seventh grade kid whose house had burned down in a megafire in Northern California, from what we know are the ,
so he was arguably a climate refugee himself. But when he learned about climate crisis in science class, he said, “My parents said it’s not real, so I dont’ believe in it.”
Alma mater
I went to my own alma mater, Chico Junior High School, and talked to a science teacher who said that one year, she realized her students were leaving her class, where they were learning climate science, and walking into history class, where the teacher was showing them YouTube videos that alleged global warming was natural and the crisis was a hoax. She confronted the history teacher. “They’re eleven,” she remembers telling him. “We need to be really mindful of when one adult they trust says one thing and another adult they trust says, ‘Don’t worry about it.’” His response: “Well, I just want them to know both sides.”
Oklahoma teens
In a high school in Oklahoma, I talked to five teens whose families had immigrated from the Marshall Islands, a nation famously endangered by sea level rise. Four of the five said I was the first adult they’d ever heard say the words ‘climate change’ on school grounds.
Nokes
In Arkansas, I met an environmental science teacher who tells his students it’s too soon to say whether pollutants are warming the earth—it could be sun cycles, coronal mass ejections, or magnetic force fields. He has five classes a day, so he’s given that skeptical message to hundreds of kids a year in that town.
analogy with flat earth
It’s like if some kids in America were being taught that the earth were flat.
What was most surprising?
Even if they are teaching, can be undermined by other teachers.
Happening even in blue states.
Some kids are never even hearing the words.
Politicians are deciding in many places and cases in what’s happening int he curriculum. Not in control of educators and scientists.
Textbooks.
Why does it matter?
These kids have more at stake than anyone. Lots of them are already. They deserve to know the truth. Also, we need their help in solving it. Ready to roll up their sleeves.
We owe kids information about this. It’s is arguably THE definitional issue of the century they were born into. They deserve to understand that, and moreover, we also need them to be able to participate in the civic deliberations and finding solutions.
Prediction answer (what’s going to happen to this generation of students?)
There’s only so long that climate denialism will work – it’s becoming more and more obvious. These kids will learn at some point in their life that they weren’t told the truth. But the question is, will society accept it’s happening in time to forestall the worst outcomes of climate crisis.
Recommendation answer (what should we do? what should we teach?)
First of all, people need to know this is happening in their community’s classrooms.
Second, we need to decide if we want to get these messages out of schools.
SOme groups are working to get climate change in academic standards.
When I visited Oklahoma, there was no mention of climate change in any required class.
At the same time, kids in hawaii were learning about the crisis in third grade social studies, middle school science, high school biology, US history and government, world history and culture, Pacific Island studies, Earth science, environmental science, and at least one math class.
Those kids were leaving school at least somewhat climate literate.
Teachers tell me they want more More professional development on how to teach it, because they didn’t learn it themselves.
Washington State has this program spending millions of dollars a year to teach science teachers how to teach climate. And in their first two years they reached one in five teachers in the state. THey’re going beyond science teachers now and teaching english and math. That is real investment.
A good education the kids should be learning four things:
It’s real. It’s us. It’s bad. There’s hope.
And it shouldn’t be all doom and gloom. Students need to learn that there are solutions to this problem, and that they can be part of that solution. In fact, we need them to be part of the solution. They should leave a climate education ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
What’s next for you?/your next project?
I grew up near Paradise, which you might remember is the town that burned to the ground in a giant fire in 2018. So I’m going to spend some time in my hometown and report on what happens in the aftermath of a climate catastrophe.
