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Are US Students Learning Enough About Climate Change?

With its effects now felt the world over, one might assume that education on climate change would be a high priority. But this is not the case — for numerous reasons we will get into, in this first of a four-part series on climate change education in the US.

By Roberto Guerra | Published 4 weeks ago | About a 6 minute read

Image: Thirdman

The fact that human industrial activities have been altering our climate system, mainly by heating up the planet, has been publicly known for far longer than many people think.

Some of the first documented cases of discussion of human-induced climate change began with the ancient Greeks, who debated whether the draining of swamps and cutting of trees could affect local rain patterns.

But it wasn’t until a few millennia later, in 1896, when Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius calculated that human activities could significantly alter the entire planet’s climate system.

Fast-forward nearly a century to a hot June day in Washington DC in 1988, when James Hansen, then-director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, stood before the US Senate Energy Committee and asserted that “the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now;” and in 2015, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a damning report documenting the deception tactics used for decades by major fossil fuel companies to spread misinformation about climate change.

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Since then, global average temperatures have continued to climb — with each recent year warmer than the last, and people the world over experiencing the escalating effects of the climate crisis in some form or another.

Climate change in US education

Historically, the United States has been the most significant contributor to human-induced climate change — having released more than 509 gigatons of planet-warming C02 into the atmosphere from 1850 through 2021.

One might assume, then, that education on the subject would be a high priority across the nation. But sadly, this is not the case — for numerous reasons we will get into, in this first of a four-part series on climate change education in the US.

Today, there are roughly 90,000 pre-kindergarten, elementary and middle schools in the United States (both public and private) — and climate change education programs among them are few and far between. In fact, wildly differing, state-by-state educational and funding priorities have created a system that seems to be letting students down in terms of learning key subjects: US K-12 students have lagged behind their peers in other developed nations in recent years on international math and science assessments. In a 2015 Pew Research Center report, only 29 percent of Americans rated the country’s K-12 education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as above average. Scientists were even more critical: A companion survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that just 16 percent called US K-12 STEM education the best or above average; 46 percent called it below average.

So, maybe it’s no wonder that an emergent area such as climate science hasn’t yet made the list in US school curricula? But quality isn’t the only consideration, as Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Climate Portal pointed out in 2022: “In the US, climate change is not a standard part of the public-school curriculum in many districts due to a lack of resources, lack of teacher background knowledge, and forces that push against this type of education.”

What do educators have to say?

“There is nothing in Florida’s curriculum pertaining to climate change,” Maria Fialcov — a retired elementary school teacher who taught at Tropical Elementary School in Plantation, Florida for 27 years — told Sustainable Brands® (SB). “Unless there’s a teacher who is willing to — and has the ability to — have an environmental club, there is no talk about climate change.”

In 2021, Harvard Graduate School of Education published an article detailing how award-winning journalist Katie Worth visited several US states, spoke to teachers, analyzed textbooks, and had conversations with students and families — all on her quest to find out what children in the US are learning about climate change.

“There were disagreements among teachers about how to approach it. Sometimes teachers were educating their kids about it, and the kids would push back because they'd heard at home that it was a hoax. Sometimes parents were mad that the kids were learning about it or that they weren't learning about it. So, it's a hot topic on the ground — even for children,” she reported.

As Ariani Serrani, a Washington DC-based education professional and curriculum developer of Paradigms for Peace — which is based on the Earth Charter International principles — told SB: “Most kids in the US haven’t learned much about climate change; and if they know, it’s because they learned on their own, through social media — and not something they’ve learned in school.”

Serrani published a story book, The Jungle Jinni, to help elementary and middle-school educators integrate climate into their curricula. While writing the book, Serrani did her own research, over a period of four years, by speaking directly with teachers.

“I’ve been trying to see what makes paradigm shifts and why there’s a gap between consciousness and application of knowledge,” she said. “The issue is, we can’t get to the point of consciousness because we can’t even get the material out there. Many teachers I’ve spoken to, even if they are aware of it, don’t have the knowledge or the background to teach climate change — and they’re already so overburdened with their load that asking them to teach climate change … they’re already burnt out.”

Public opinion is not enough to improve the situation

In 2019, a survey conducted by IPSOS/NPR found that 86 percent of K-12 teachers and 84 percent of parents of children under the age of 18 believe climate change should be taught in schools.

Yet, despite such overwhelming support for this urgent issue to be a part of primary school curricula, one of the major barriers is the fact that less than half of K-12 teachers have any formal education in climate science — nor do they get enough support to teach on the subject.

Looking to the future

As the effects of climate change become increasingly evident, will the education system in the US finally catch up?

Unfortunately, climate change has become increasingly and unnecessarily politicized; and its integration into the US public education system may ultimately depend on who is in charge — at the highest levels of government — of who learns what, and the personal and political beliefs behind those decisions.

Part two of this series will focus on high schools, along with more on the US education system as a whole and some of the other underlying issues it faces when it comes to climate change education.

Roberto Guerra

Roberto Guerra is a bilingual writer, editor, entrepreneur, corporate engagement and communications specialist, and US Air Force veteran with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Universidad de la Sabana (Bogota, Colombia) and an International Master in Sustainable Development and Corporate Responsibility from EOI Business School (Madrid, Spain). Born in New York and raised in Florida, Roberto is former managing director for the Spanish-language version of vegan business magazine "vegconomist" and is also author of three novels. He has lived, worked and studied on four different continents.

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