Where are Schools on Climate Change?

I met a teenager recently who I cannot get out of my mind--a 16-year-old who seemed to have everything going for him. He was handsome, smart, likeable, a good student, and comfortable in his lanky frame. The kind of kid whom one instantly feels will do well in life. Except for one thing: He didn't think so.

In the future he envisioned, his whole generation was hurtling toward catastrophe. Few adults seemed to care enough to stop it. And the best he could do, he naively reasoned, was plan to move to the Midwest, which at least would protect him from rising sea levels (if not heat waves, droughts, and economic disasters).

When this is how some of our best and brightest view their future, isn't it time for schools to start doing something different? And I don't mean just a token nod to "Education for Sustainability Week" (Nov. 9-13). I mean something truly, radically different.

Schools, like the rest of us, need to acknowledge the part they have played in perpetuating the ignorance that has gotten us into our environmental messes. And they need to step up to the plate to offer young people the chance at a better future.

Why schools?

Because all of our environmental crises are essentially symptoms of a larger underlying problem, which is our collective failure to understand and practice sustainable living. And if school is not the obvious place to root out that ignorance and replace it with something better, I don't know what is.

While world leaders prepare to address climate change in Copenhagen next month, we also need to look to schools to do their part. Schools have a responsibility to prepare young people to understand and deal with the growing challenges that will come with climate change, as well as the depletion of natural resources, population growth, and other issues. But perhaps even more important, they need to offer students an education that will enable them to live in better relationship to the natural world than we have done.

How schools teach young people about climate change, of course, must be age-appropriate and empowering. Elementary school kids, for example, are too young to be burdened with melting ice caps and drowning polar bears. Not only do they lack the intellectual capacity to understand the implications, they have a fundamental psychological need to trust their world--and deserve to simply enjoy nature before anyone calls on them to protect it.

High school students have the capacity to study climate change but an equally strong psychological need to do so constructively. The harsh facts, in other words, need to be balanced with the hopeful ones--those that demonstrate progress and ways they too can make a difference.

But teaching young people about sustainability--or, more generally, the laws of nature and how we might best interact with it--can and should take place in every grade.

And the good news is that, in recent years, a growing number of schools have begun doing just this. I know of schools in Maine, Wisconsin, and Oregon, for example, that are getting students outdoors to tend school gardens, restore creeks and watersheds, and develop a genuine sense of caring about nature, which almost inevitably comes with having experiences within it.

I've seen students in fast-growing suburbs deeply engaged in examining the impact that our insatiable consumption habits have had on the natural world and fascinated by their studies of the new and inspiring alternatives of sustainable energy, agriculture, housing, development, and transportation.

There is a long way to go, but so far the results should be encouraging to educators and parents alike. A growing body of research shows that engaging students in the experiential or place-based learning that is central to this kind of education leads to better test scores and classroom behavior.

Equally important, these schools are helping young people envision a future that includes not only climate change but also the development of wind, solar, and thermal power. Not only the loss of vital natural resources, such as oil and water, but also the gain of brilliant new inventions that allow us to take less from nature and live more peaceably within it.

Selfishly, I think to myself that schools may also enable young people to design solutions that we cannot yet even dream of. A little less selfishly, I think of that 16-year-old and how easy it really would be to show him that there is plausible hope for a promising future.

Lisa Bennett is the communications director for the Center for Ecoliteracy (www.ecoliteracy.org), a Berkeley-based nonprofit dedicated to sustainability education, and a contributor to the new book, Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability (Watershed Media/U.C. Press, 2009).

 

Comments

[Michael Gillan Maxwell]

Your article is extremely thought provokong and timely. I am a professional public school educator and to repeat the cliche' that "our children are our future" is an understatment to say the least. In response to your article, on a personal level, I am heartened by the level of awareness and conscience our young people do exhibit. I am also encouraged by a recent groundswell on the part of our institutions to go green and promote eco-friendly practices. We can all do our part by engaging young people in open discourse about these issues, encouraging their inquiry and helping to create a safe environment that promotes the raising of consciousness.

[mlaiuppa]

When I was his age, air pollution was the big scary future. We weren't going to have clean air to breath. We've done a lot to clean our air.

I drive a Prius.

And when there's an equivalent electric car, I'll drive that. I'll just put a few more PV panels on the roof.

If schools really want to step up to the plate, they need to stop subsidizing the killing of trees. Textbooks, photocopying and tests all kill trees. Stop the standardized tests, develop a Kindle appropriate for textbooks (that means color and pdfs) and start using docs sent as attachments and returned via drop boxes. You can reduce a lot of paper and save a lot of trees that way.

It's hard to talk the talk when you're not walking the walk.

[sageworks]

And not just high schools. What about colleges which have been remarkably absent from reality for a long time. Most colleges. And even at those who are racing to claim the mantle of sustainability, I guarantee you most graduates will go through their 4 (or more) years without one environmental studies course. Just amazing.
Miriam Weinstein
Making A Difference College Guide (10th ed)
http://www.green-colleges.com

[Endersdragon]

I really don't think environmental studies should be a requirement up there with mathmatics and chemistry. Of course offer it as a nonlab science class and many will take it... but I don't think all should. I think its important for all to understand disabled people, in particular those with "invisable disabilities" (ADHD, ODD, Asperger's, Autism, etc... ADHD and AS being the most invisable of those)... but thats rarely even an option. Beyond that I think sign language courses should be allowed if not required as much as Spanish courses... but they rarely are. In short, of all the classes we need to REQUIRE for college students I don't think environmental studies should be up there.

[BettyMcDonalds]

All school district across the nation should implement Meat-free day somehow to address climate change.

[Endersdragon]

I might be dumb here... but what does vegetarism have to do with climate change?

[abbienormal]

Cows emit significant amounts of methane. So, I guess it should technically be a beef free day.

[lbsaltzman]

Your blog gets to a core issue, which is the scientific illiteracy of large segments of the American population. Schools should not be knuckling under to global warming denialist propaganda and sticking to teaching the science.

[adoantarel]

Science standards across the country now require textbooks to dicuss alternate energy sources and means of conservation. However, global climate change is sometimes another matter. Teachers themselves may be resistant, based on their political leanings, to teach CO2 reduction.

It's sad that the debate has been politicized that students cannot truly study it either way. Students should learn the scientific consensus and temper that with a healthy skepticism. That is part of the essence of science.

[Endersdragon]

Sadly... I don't trust teachers to do this at all. Teachers always bring their own opinions and beliefs to school... and kids always pick up on them...