Third graders at Public School 103 in the north Bronx sat on a rug last month while their teacher, Kristy Neumeister, led a book discussion.
The book, “Rain School,” is about children who live in a rural region of Chad, a country in central Africa. Every year, their school must be rebuilt because storms wash it away.
“And what’s causing all these rains and storms and floods?” asked Ms. Neumeister.
“Carbon,” said Aiden, a serious-looking 8-year-old.
Ms. Neumeister was one of 39 elementary school teachers from across the city who participated in a four-day training session in the summer called “Integrating Climate Education in N.Y.C. Public Schools.” Its goal was to make the teachers familiar with the topic, so they can work climate change into their lesson plans.
They aren’t teaching kids about climate change… WHAT? Am I the only one shocked by this? I definitely learned about global warming in school in the early 2000s.
Every other science fair project was about it! These mf’s probably haven’t even seen biodome.
It depends on the state I’m surprised in a blue state it’s not taught. I learned about it in NH but there they care about the environment. They are the ones to push for no mercury in batteries. Mostly because of fishing and hunting but they cared at least.
MAGA happened since then…
We talked about climate change in every school year I can remember from 1985 > now
They should teach how the oil industry and its PR agencies lobbied and fomented denialism for decades to ensure that nothing would ever be done, so the kids know who to eat first when harvests really start failing.
Will they educate them about how greedy market capitalists knew they were causing it but covered it up for decades, and lobby still to prevent addressing it adequately so as to not to continue making it worse every single day because it would dig into their private profit expectations?
These kids deserve to know how fucked they are, how much we fucked their only habitat, and who is most responsible.
But we all know that won’t happen. We’ll be teaching them the glorious free market cures all ills as the planet burns around them and the sociopath families most responsible retreat to their luxury bunker complexes, mischief managed.
Over a century. The first papers linking fossil fuel emissions to potential climate change started being published in the very late 1890s/ early 1900s
now education is going to officially be a state by state issue without federal oversight
and if you are not educated enough to vote when you are old enough it will be your fault for not voting right
when are politicians, elected officials, and corporations going to be held accountable for dividing the US into fifty different countries all with different laws, policies, human rights, etcetera and not the people who are suffering under the boot of corporate owned politicians and “elected” officials
Why would you want more federal oversight? States and school districts are far better at reacting in real time to the needs of their people than the federal government. Do you really want 9/11 taught in current events because a bunch of 60+ year old people believe history stops after WWII?
Education oversight has always been terrible, from no child left behind, to even student succeeds. The best your going to get is some standardized tests and lip service to educating everyone.
The federal government should be the last resort for any governing function.
so you want fifty different states deciding the people’s fates depending on where they are and not a unified government?
think that would be the Disunited States of America
States are perfectly capable of working together, they already do it in tons of cases including education. Adding more federal oversight makes it worse in almost every case. It’s not required that states actively fight each other unless told otherwise.
In the case of education there’s already a few standards out there that are popular, common core is the current dominant one.
they work together these states?
there are border patrol like police on the borders of certain states to prevent people who are following another state’s set of laws and policies from entering their state
I’m starting to think we should seriously consider getting rid of all these “states”
Are they going to teach survival training? Because at this point there isn’t much else to learn if they are thinking they can prevent it. The change is already here.
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Is not the kid who need to know about this, it is government who are controlled by lobbiests funded by wealthy cooperation, all of which need to be in prisons.
The hope is that kids will all learn it and grow up to be smarter than the assholes running things now.
Education of individuals is not the solution to systemic issues.
Education of individuals is the only way to have an educated populace.
Which is great if an educated populace is your goal. But my goal is to stop raising global average temperatures etc. Those things don’t directly correlate (at best it may change some votes once the educated become voters, but politicians aren’t super reliable either even when they do get in). I’m not saying I prefer ignorance, I am saying solutions that directly address the problems are the things that actually have a chance at working in a useful timeframe.
I actually think it is the longterm solution. If we had more people educated on the issue, we wouldn’t have such a hard time getting support for shortterm actions we need right now.
Counterpoint: nutrition labels have done nothing for obesity in the US aside from shift responsibility from food manufacturers to individuals. Same with environmental stuff, you can educate people as much as you want but if the people with power have no desire to change (e.g. legislatures and corporations) then education doesn’t really do anything. And they find ways to take over education with propaganda, like carbon footprints. I’m not saying ignorance is preferable, I’m saying education is not sufficient so there are better things to focus on in terms of solutions.
I’m saying education is not sufficient
Agreed, education is only part of the solution.
I mean, I do support climate change education, but if you do it like brainwashing, without the kids understanding what carbon is, in this quote, for example, that’s no education…
