{"id":18311,"date":"2012-01-17T17:40:11","date_gmt":"2012-01-18T01:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/?p=18311"},"modified":"2018-02-01T23:48:01","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T23:48:01","slug":"climate-science-in-schools-the-next-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2012\/01\/17\/climate-science-in-schools-the-next-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Science in Schools: the Next “Evolution”"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Oakland group vows to keep climate science in the classroom.
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Some science teachers face opposition from students, parents and even administrators when they teach basic climate science.” credit=”Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the climate change debate creeps into classrooms across the country, an Oakland non-profit vows to stem the tide of climate denial in California. They also plan to conduct a comprehensive review of science textbooks to help teachers separate the sound from the shaky in climate science.<\/p>\n

The Oakland-based\u00a0National Center for Science Education<\/a> (NCSE) has announced that it will now offer support to teachers facing resistance to climate science in the classroom, similar to their long-standing work to keep the instruction of evolution in schools.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve already had a couple of calls along the lines of, \u2018I know you guys do evolution, but I\u2019ve got this problem with [teaching] climate change and do you have any suggestions for me,\u2019\u201d said Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of NSCE.
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\nScott says parents often argue that schools should teach both sides of a controversial scientific issue. But she doesn’t consider the fundamental conclusions of climate science to be controversial.\u00a0\u201cThe idea that scientific topics that are well grounded in basic science, like evolution or climate change, should be balanced, or that all views should be taught, is not one that is very scientifically or pedagogically supportable,” said Scott. She readily agrees that many of the details of climate science are debated between scientists, such as differing approaches to modeling climate change. However, she maintains that\u00a0\u201cthe science community is pretty uniform in its acceptance of the fact that the planet is getting warmer.” Nevertheless, Scott said skepticism toward climate science has gained traction<\/a> with the general public, so legislators and some school boards<\/a> are starting to demand that science curricula provide room for doubt.<\/p>\n

The Center’s approach to dealing with these issues has always been local.\u00a0\u201cWe provide information to people in communities,” Scott emphasized. \u201cWe get local people to appear at school board meetings because all politics is local and this is politics.\u201d The Center’s staff isn’t nearly big enough to fly around the country defending climate science in 1,500 school districts. So it provides support to teachers who ask for it.\u00a0\u201cTeachers in general are conflict-averse; they just want to do their jobs,” explained Scott. Unfortunately that means that it is often easier for a teacher to avoid the issue completely than to stand up for the climate science.<\/p>\n

[module align=”right” width=”half” type=”pull-quote”]”The science community is pretty uniform in its acceptance of the fact that the planet is getting warmer.”[\/module]<\/p>\n

California is not immune. The Center in Oakland has documented at least two cases of climate change flare-ups in California classrooms. When an Advanced Placement environmental science class was introduced in Los Alamitos, a small city in Orange County, the school board ruled<\/a> that global warming should be taught as a “controversial subject,” meaning that the teacher should present both sides of the controversy to students. And, in Portola Valley, a stone’s throw from Stanford University, a parent demanded a debate between a climate scientist and a climate denier after learning that the teacher had shown Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth<\/em><\/a> in class.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest challenges to NCSE’s new initiative will be the distinctly political nature of the climate change debate. In their battles to allow science teachers to instruct on evolution, NCSE always leaned on the First Amendment and its directive to separate church and state as a backstop to its argument. “There is no constitutional amendment supporting good science,”\u00a0sighed Scott. “We merely have to try to persuade people to try to do what\u2019s best.\u201d Largely that persuasion has focused on moving the “controversy” part of the topic into the social science sphere, where policy is debated, and leaving the science alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Oakland group vows to keep climate science in the classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":18315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[182,251,688],"coauthors":[],"series":[],"affiliates":[],"programs":[],"collections":[],"interests":[],"class_list":["post-18311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thescience","tag-education","tag-global-warming","tag-youth"],"acf":{"template_type":"standard","featured_image_type":"standard","is_audio_post":false},"yoast_head":"\nClimate Science in Schools: the Next "Evolution" | Climate Watch<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2012\/01\/17\/climate-science-in-schools-the-next-evolution\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Climate Science in Schools: the Next "Evolution" | Climate Watch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An Oakland group vows to keep climate science in the classroom.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2012\/01\/17\/climate-science-in-schools-the-next-evolution\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Climate Watch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-01-18T01:40:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-02-01T23:48:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cdn.kqed.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2012\/01\/TeacherClassroomGeneric080211.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2118\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1418\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Katrina Schwartz\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@kschwart\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Katrina Schwartz\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2012\/01\/17\/climate-science-in-schools-the-next-evolution\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2012\/01\/17\/climate-science-in-schools-the-next-evolution\/\",\"name\":\"Climate Science in Schools: the Next \\\"Evolution\\\" | Climate Watch\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-01-18T01:40:11+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-02-01T23:48:01+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/#\/schema\/person\/39eb8de73cfee10d657c92249ec16212\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2012\/01\/17\/climate-science-in-schools-the-next-evolution\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2012\/01\/17\/climate-science-in-schools-the-next-evolution\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2012\/01\/17\/climate-science-in-schools-the-next-evolution\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Climate Science in Schools: the Next “Evolution”\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/\",\"name\":\"Climate Watch\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/#\/schema\/person\/39eb8de73cfee10d657c92249ec16212\",\"name\":\"Katrina Schwartz\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/68d4dc78000d2d4fc0cdfcf780b2b7ba\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a6a567574dafefa959593925eead665c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a6a567574dafefa959593925eead665c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Katrina Schwartz\"},\"description\":\"Katrina Schwartz is a journalist based in San Francisco. 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