ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Several dozen teenagers wearing light blue T-shirts with the words #teachclimate on them gathered in St. Louis in late February. It filled the hearing room at the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul. It was a cold, windy day, in contrast to the state’s nearly snowless, mild winter.
High school and college students and other advocates who are part of the group Climate Generation have called on the Minnesota Youth Council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill that would require schools to provide more education about climate change.
Ethan Vue, who grew up in California with drought and extreme temperatures, now lives in Minnesota and is a high school senior pushing the bill.
“I remember seeing my classmates sweating all the time and even dousing themselves with water,” Vue said in a phone interview, noting that climate change is making heat waves longer and hotter but that they haven’t learned anything about it. at school.
“The topic has been updated. If there is something we have just learned, it is that there is global warming, the planet is getting warmer.”
In places that teach according to standards set by the National Science Teachers Association, state governments, and other organizations, many children learn about air quality, ecosystems, biodiversity, and soil and water in Earth and environmental science classes.
But students and advocates say this is insufficient. They want districts, boards and state lawmakers to need more education about the warming of the planet and for it to be included in more topics.
Some states and school districts have moved in the opposite direction. In Texas, the board of education rejected books containing climate information. In Florida, school materials deny climate change.
“One could theoretically go through middle school and high school without acknowledging the climate crisis,” said Jacob Friedman, a high school senior in Florida who has learned nothing about climate beyond electives. “Or even admitting there is a problem with global warming.”
This is odd for Friedman, who experienced it firsthand when Hurricane Ian closed nearby schools and flooded homes in 2022.
A study after the storm found that climate change added at least 10% more rain to Hurricane Ian. Experts also say hurricanes intensify faster because of extra greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and warm the oceans.
“It’s such an unfair reality for a young person to graduate high school without knowing the greatest existential threat they will face in their lifetime,” said Leah Qusba, executive director of the nonprofit Climate Emergency Action.
Some places add more instructions on the subject. In 2020, climate change was required to be taught at all grade levels in New Jersey. Connecticut and then California followed. More than two dozen new measures were implemented in 10 states last year, according to the National Center for Science Education.
Where some proposals call for teaching the basic science and human causes of climate change, the Minnesota bill goes further by requiring state officials to provide guidance to schools on teaching climate justice; This includes the idea that the changes will hit disadvantaged communities harder.
Some lawmakers say they’ve heard from school administrators and teachers that this has gone too far.
“What I was told was: ‘Why are we pushing a political perspective, a political agenda?’” Republican Minnesota Rep. Ben Bakeberg said at a House Education Policy Committee hearing in March 2023. “This is real.”
The bill did not advance in the 2023 session. Now it didn’t happen this year either. Fans say they’ll try again next year.
Aware of such opposition, some climate-concerned students choose to campaign at their schools rather than through the legislative process.
Three years ago, flood waters destroyed Ariela Lara’s mother’s village in Oaxaca, Mexico, during their visit. Later, Lara returned home to California to encounter skies filled with smoke from wildfires that forced thousands to evacuate or remain trapped inside for weeks.
Despite what she saw, Lara felt that at school she was only taught about recycling and one’s carbon footprint, a measure of one’s personal greenhouse gas emissions.
So he went to the board of education.
“I had to really think about how I could go to people in power to really rewrite the curriculum that we were learning,” Lara said. “It would be very tiring because for me, I was the one actually trying to implement it.”
When her school offered the Advanced Placement Environmental Science course, Lara was too senior to enroll in the program. According to the College Board, AP Enviro covers climate change but is also broader in scope.
When targeted efforts don’t work, some students feel like they’re on their own.
Climate education seems like a simple task for high school student Siyeon Joo, who lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, which was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and has been affected by many other intense storms and heat waves.
But Joo wasn’t exposed to climate change in public middle school, and an educator there once told her it wasn’t real.
“I remember sitting in that classroom, feeling really angry that this was the system that was being imposed on me at the time,” the student, now 16, said.
Joo had to enroll in a private school to learn these subjects. Many students do not have this option.
Experts say climate materials can be used in classes without adding burden to schools or burdening students. But like the legislation, this will take time that students say they don’t have.
“I was a part of these communities that confirmed how much was at stake if we didn’t take action,” said Lara, a student in California, recalling how important it was for her to be educated about her experiences. “You should be able to go to school and learn about the seriousness of the climate crisis.”
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Alexa St. John is from Detroit and Doug Glass is from St. Paul reported from Minn.
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Alexa St. John is a climate solutions reporter for the Associated Press. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter). @alexa_stjohn. Reach him at ast.john@ap.org.
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