In a poll released last week, the majority of Americans think climate change should be taught in schools. The Yale Program on Climate Change (YPCCC) reported that in a national average, 78 percent of people polled responded they either somewhat or strongly agreed.
When asked, “Should schools teach our children about the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to global warming?” the majority shared the same view in 50 states and was independent of political association. Most Americans, according to YPCCC data, do not feel the highly contested issue that’s boiling at the political level.
At least 10 states including Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma and Kentucky, are “debating their science standards,” Eco Watch reported.
“The two topics that arouse the most discontent and controversy are climate change and evolution,” Glenn Branch, National Center for Science Education Deputy Director, said in a Business Insider report in 2017.
Heartland Institute, a fossil-fuel-funded and known climate-denying organization, is also behind the plan to change the educational standards on climate change and in 2017, Heartland distributed copies of the book, Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming.
Yet 19 states and Washington, DC, have already adopted the science-education template, Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which links climate change to human activity, Business Insider reported. The YPCCC determined from its research that more teacher education on climate change is needed to properly teach students about the issue. There were just 30 percent of middle school teachers and only 45 percent of high school teachers who properly knew the “degree of scientific consensus on human-caused climate change,” EcoWatch reported.
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