Like evolution in the 1920s, climate change science in schools has become a contentious issue. However, unlike evolution, there is no U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring that teaching efforts related to climate change in schools include:
- This spring of 2012, the Tennessee Legislature passed a bill that protects teachers who do not agree with accepted climate science and want to teach alternative explanations.2
- In 2011, the school board in Los Alamitos, California passed a policy requiring teachers to have special instructional oversight when talking about climate change.3
- The education committee of the Oklahoma House of Representatives recently approved a bill that allows teachers to discuss the “scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories” such as evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.4 The House of Representatives approved the bill—the “Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act” HB 1551—and it now awaits the Oklahoma Senate’s approval.5
- In Mesa County, Colorado, a group created a petition to prohibit the teaching of manmade climate change and other “personal” views.6
- In Portola Valley, California, a parent filed a complaint against a teacher for showing the film “An Inconvenient Truth” in a sixth grade classroom. As a resolution, the school superintendant began requiring “parental permission before students viewed the movie in the future and prohibiting teachers from talking about ways to address climate change.”7
In addition to the controversies within individual states and districts, various non-profit groups are also trying to influence climate change education. One on side is the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), which works to defend climate science and evolution education in the public school education system.9 On the other side is the Heartland Institute, which is responding with a curriculum that emphasizes climate change skepticism.10
Monkey Business in Tennessee
Earlier in 2012 the Tennessee legislature lived up to the legacy established in the State in the 1920s. Tennessee was the site of the 1925 “Monkey Trial,” in which John Scopes was convicted of violating a state law when he taught “man has descended from a lower order of animals.”11 Eighty-seven years later, the Tennessee Legislature has passed a law (which the Governor didn’t sign, but didn’t veto either) that says that teachers cannot be prohibited from “helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.”12 Basically, the law allows public schoolteachers to challenge climate change and evolution in their classrooms without fear of sanction.
Proponents of the Tennessee law argue that it protects teachers from school administrators and gives them “the clarity and security to discuss alternative ideas to evolution and climate change that students may have picked up at home and want to explore in class.”13 However, critics believe that the measure really just “gives legal cover to teachers to introduce pseudoscientific ideas to students.”14;15 Whatever the true motivations are, it is clear that the law has influenced the development of similar legislation in other states. At least five other states, including Oklahoma, are considering similar legislation this year. 16;17
National Curriculum
Most of us know science textbooks to be dry and objective. A curriculum is usually vetted by several parties before it is presented in a matter that is “driven by sound scientific logic—not tainted by ideological or philosophical positions.”18 How then, is it possible for there to be so much contention about how climate science is taught, and for think tanks to influence science curricula? To begin with, there are currently no national standards for how global warming is a man-made phenomenon . The lack of standards allows science teachers to teach climate change in whatever way they want.20
Politically conservative educators are increasingly relying on educational materials from the Heartland Institute, a conservative and libertarian public policy think tank. Apparently, Heartland aims to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next two years to design and distribute a curriculum specifically focused on “foster[ing] doubt about the scientific evidence surrounding climate change.”21;22 In response to the Heartland Institute, several watchdog groups are fighting back. Groups like the National Center for Science Education argue that the Heartland Institute is portraying differences of opinion on climate as being equally balanced between believers and nonbelievers, when in reality most scientists agree that humans are warming the atmosphere.23
As climate change has become an increasingly politicized issue, the tension between liberal and conservative groups over how the science should be taught has also grown. While scientists focus on providing students with the best available information based on empirical and logical support, some parents believe that the ideas of consensus, fairness, and political controversy should determine the science curricula. In schools, information is often presented as truth or fact to children who are still developing their belief systems, and will therefore be particularly, and arguable easily, influenced. Thus, we should expect the battle over teaching climate science to continue for the foreseeable future.
