Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. One of the stories that's most dominant
Speaker 1: in the news right now is climate change. Behind the
Speaker 1: story of climate change, though, lies not just the underlying science,
Speaker 1: but the question of who knows that science and how
Speaker 1: they learn it. In particular, how is climate change or
Speaker 1: the absence of climate change a story that some people
Speaker 1: believe in being taught in schools in the United States.
Speaker 1: A new book explores precisely that issue. The author is
Speaker 1: Katie Worth, an investigative journalist who writes about science politics,
Speaker 1: and there are many intersections. Her book is called Miseducation,
Speaker 1: How Climate Change Is Taught in America. It shows a
Speaker 1: number of ways in which fossil fuel companies have influenced
Speaker 1: science education, and it also shows how the politics of
Speaker 1: many teachers in the United States affect the way they
Speaker 1: teach climate science to their students. The book is fascinating
Speaker 1: and significant and in many ways troubling, and I'm very
Speaker 1: pleased that Katie is here to discuss it with me today. Katy,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about your fascinating new book, Miseducation How Climate Change
Speaker 1: is Taught in America, And I want to begin by
Speaker 1: asking you just to tell us your basic view of
Speaker 1: what is going on. How is climate change being taught
Speaker 1: or not taught in America? Your title missage gives away
Speaker 1: something of your answer. Yeah, Well, the short answer is
Speaker 1: that there is a surprising amount of climate skepticism climate
Speaker 1: denial being taught in public schools. And my reporting kind
Speaker 1: of went into how that happened and why it matters.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of points of friction in the world
Speaker 1: of climate education, teachers arguing with other teachers about what
Speaker 1: should be taught, and administrators mandating that it not be taught,
Speaker 1: and teachers pushing back, and students and parents mad about it.
Speaker 1: I found that everywhere that I went, no matter what community,
Speaker 1: it was in the reddest communities and the bluest communities.
Speaker 1: But the ultimate takeaway is that the classroom is not
Speaker 1: this ideologically neutral place when it comes to climate change.
Speaker 1: In some places, kids are getting a fairly robust education
Speaker 1: about this issue that's going to define the century they
Speaker 1: were born into. And then in other places they're actively
Speaker 1: learning climate denialism. In class. That leads perfectly into the
Speaker 1: biggest question that I have coming out of reading the book,
Speaker 1: and it's this, I completely buy the story you're telling.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've convinced me entirely that the teaching of
Speaker 1: climate changes, as you just put it, not ideologically neutral.
Speaker 1: Why would we expect that it would be? And the
Speaker 1: reason I asked that is the teaching of evolution is
Speaker 1: not ideologically neutral in the United States, a century after
Speaker 1: we started having our biggest fights about it. Education in
Speaker 1: the United States is democratically structured with a small D,
Speaker 1: which means local school boards make decisions and sometimes state
Speaker 1: legislatures make decisions, and those are political bodies. And we
Speaker 1: have in the United States a continuing, deep, politicized, partisanized
Speaker 1: disagreement about climate change, independent of what the science says.
Speaker 1: So why wouldn't we expect to see the exact same
Speaker 1: kinds of ideological divisions that you that you find. Yes,
Speaker 1: we live in a country where you know, one of
Speaker 1: our two major parties rejects climate science. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think we have this idea that in an ideal world,
Speaker 1: kids walk into a science class and learn science and
Speaker 1: the science is incontrovertible, right like there is no evidence
Speaker 1: that climate change is not happening or not happening because
Speaker 1: of humans, and yet kids are learning or told that
Speaker 1: that's not certain. Right, So, in an ideal world, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to worry about the adult politics seeping into
Speaker 1: the minds of children. We would just be able to
Speaker 1: truy that kids are able to access the truth of
Speaker 1: the matter. That's a fascinating answer, Kittie, and I want
Speaker 1: to just delve into a little bit if it's okay
Speaker 1: with you, please, Yeah. So, in an ideal world, I
Speaker 1: think I hear you saying science would be science and
Speaker 1: there would be no politics in it. But there is
Speaker 1: politics and science and more fundamentally, there's always a politics
Speaker 1: to education. When you teach kids, you're not just teaching
Speaker 1: them facts. You're also teaching them values, beliefs, ideas. And
Speaker 1: it may be that the aspiration to treat science as
Speaker 1: a quote unquote truth sounds good as a matter of
Speaker 1: pr or polemic in favor of science, but it's not
Speaker 1: the way that many people think of science, right. Many
Speaker 1: people think of science as produced by social processes. And
Speaker 1: if it's produced by social processes, it's susceptible to these
Speaker 1: kinds of political disagreements. That was maybe more of amusing
Speaker 1: than a question. But I wonder why you think about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally fair. I mean, adult politics make their way into
Speaker 1: our educational spaces. Period. We're saying that about critical race theory.
Speaker 1: So it's not in some ways very surprising that that's
Speaker 1: happening with this issue that is a big point of
Speaker 1: disagreement among adults. Of course that's going to kind of
Speaker 1: passively seep into classrooms too. And yet I would argue
Speaker 1: it's still shocking. And what's shocking about it is that
Speaker 1: these kids are being born into a century that will
Speaker 1: be defined by this crisis. There's no child on this
Speaker 1: earth that will be untouched by this crisis. And they
Speaker 1: in America. And again, this is a problem in America
Speaker 1: that is not a problem in many other developed nations.
Speaker 1: They are sometimes learning nothing about it, sometimes learning active
Speaker 1: misinformation about it. I think it's a big problem, you know,
Speaker 1: like for our future, we need these kids to be
Speaker 1: active participants, be able to participate in civic deliberation over
Speaker 1: what we do next on this crisis. Let's turn then
Speaker 1: to the part of your book that talks about how
Speaker 1: this is happening did you find that there are shadowy
Speaker 1: groups hiding out there that are trying to pitch the
Speaker 1: narrative that there is no climate change to this day
Speaker 1: in the country, Yes, there are. There's this history of
Speaker 1: the fossil fuel industry borrowing from Big Tobacco's playbook and
Speaker 1: being very coordinated in getting out misinformation about climate change
Speaker 1: because they feared that it would affect their business. And
Speaker 1: this has been very well reported and at one point
Speaker 1: they even had a meeting that we know this from
Speaker 1: a leaked document, in which they made a plan specifically
Speaker 1: to insert their view on climate change into education because
Speaker 1: they wanted to protect against future action on climate change.
Speaker 1: They were at that time, this was in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: they were worried about Kyoto protocol and then they realized, like, well,
Speaker 1: if we want to protect against Kyoto protocols in the future,
Speaker 1: we got to get it into the minds of kids
Speaker 1: that this is not actually something that they need to
Speaker 1: worry about. So since then, the fossil fuel industry has
Speaker 1: like kind of backed off that at least in its
Speaker 1: most egregious sense, you know, but they're still getting their
Speaker 1: messages into classrooms. They create a ton of classroom materials.
Speaker 1: When you say that you who is the they who's
Speaker 1: creating the classroom materials. So many fossil fuel companies create
Speaker 1: their own educational materials. The American Petroleum Institute has has
Speaker 1: done so and partnered with the National Science Teachers Association.
Speaker 1: And then there's smaller state wide lobbying groups. For example,
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, the Arkansas Oil and Gas Lobby hires a
Speaker 1: person to go classroom to classroom, this is her whole job,
Speaker 1: and give presentations on the fossil fuel industry in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: And as part of that presentation, she explicitly downplays climate
Speaker 1: change and says it's not something that the kids need
Speaker 1: to worry about. That every source of fuel has problems.
Speaker 1: When mills kill birds, you know, solar power can be
Speaker 1: taken out by a tornado. She raises, like, fossil fuels
Speaker 1: have problems, and then every other renewable has problems. Who's
Speaker 1: to say which one is really the best? You know,
Speaker 1: is kind of her talking point on this issue. And
Speaker 1: she's telling this just third graders, seventh graders, tenth graders
Speaker 1: who don't know enough to question those messages, and who
Speaker 1: pays her salary. The Arkansas Oil and gas lobby. I
Speaker 1: think they're called the Independent Oil and Gas Producers. Is
Speaker 1: that something similar model that you've observed elsewhere around the country,
Speaker 1: where a fossil fuel lobbying body literally pay someone to
Speaker 1: go classroom to classroom. I haven't found that in every state.
Speaker 1: There are other techniques. I found that in many states
Speaker 1: the oil and gas industry pays for field trips, so
Speaker 1: like you can go visit an oil derek, or visit
Speaker 1: a museum that has gotten a big donation from the
Speaker 1: industry and has a presentation on the history of oil
Speaker 1: the importance of fossil fuel products. In Oklahoma, there is
Speaker 1: an organization it's actually state agency called the Oklahoma Energy
Speaker 1: Resources Board, and they create school book that they send
Speaker 1: out to classrooms as young as kindergarten. So there's a
Speaker 1: book called Petro Pete's Bad Dream in which Petro Pete
Speaker 1: wakes up one day and doesn't have his toothbrush, doesn't
Speaker 1: have his regular clothes, the tires are missing from his bicycle,
Speaker 1: and so you know, eventually he finds out like, oh no,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with today is that I'm missing all my
Speaker 1: petroleum products. And then he wakes up and it was
Speaker 1: all a bad dream, you know, And he says, I
Speaker 1: think this is a direct quote. Having no petroleum products
Speaker 1: is a nightmare. Right, So of curiosity, how old is
Speaker 1: that book? Which just within the last few years and
Speaker 1: it's still being sent out. They've actually created new Petro
Speaker 1: Pete books since then, like in the last year or two.
Speaker 1: So this is not some historical thing that is happening.
Speaker 1: This is actively happening today. Is that different though? I mean,
Speaker 1: the Petro Pete story, it's a great story of a story.
Speaker 1: It sounds a bit different than questioning the science behind
Speaker 1: climate change. Yeah, sure. I mean it's getting a positive
Speaker 1: view of the fossil fuel industry into the minds of kids,
Speaker 1: which is not the same as denying climate change. It
Speaker 1: seems to me that what it is is that you
Speaker 1: have an industry that's very powerful in a state, like
Speaker 1: the fossiliel industry in Oklahoma is super duper powerful, has
Speaker 1: been for well over one hundred years. Right. They want
Speaker 1: people to work in their industry, they want people to
Speaker 1: like them, they want a lobby, and they figure, why
Speaker 1: not start young on those processes. I just don't know
Speaker 1: enough to know whether other industries are as organized as
Speaker 1: the fossil fuel industry is. I'm not saying it's good,
Speaker 1: but it does sound possibly like a different kind of
Speaker 1: thing than trying to question the science of climate change itself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that there are other industries that do very
Speaker 1: similar things, but the difference is that the fossil fuel
Speaker 1: industry is doing real harm to our world, right, like
Speaker 1: major or major irreversible harm to these kids futures. I
Speaker 1: guess this springs up a bigger question of how comfortable
Speaker 1: we are having these public private partnerships, if you want
Speaker 1: to call those are kind of like allowing private industry
Speaker 1: into our public schools. And I also want to make
Speaker 1: the point that some of this stuff is very explicit
Speaker 1: about climate change. I did some reporting in twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen on the nonprofit think tank Heartland, and they
Speaker 1: are libertarian think tank, and they produced a book called
Speaker 1: Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming, which is infused with
Speaker 1: all these non scientific talking points, and then they mailed
Speaker 1: them to over two hundred thousand science teachers in the US,
Speaker 1: along with a video about solar cycles and how climate
Speaker 1: change is costed by solar cycles. Lots of teachers wound
Speaker 1: up throwing those away, but surely some of them didn't
Speaker 1: know enough or were ideologically aligned and have actually used
Speaker 1: those materials in public school classrooms. I'm glad that you
Speaker 1: brought up the teachers because that's where I was hoping
Speaker 1: to go next. So again, you make a pretty commencing
Speaker 1: case to me that the fossil fuel industry wants to
Speaker 1: be well thought of and would like to the extent
Speaker 1: that it can to call into question climate change. But
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the human beings who teach
Speaker 1: our kids, who are also a crucial part of this story. Now,
Speaker 1: thinking about teachers is they're just like all other human beings.
Speaker 1: They have beliefs and values, and their beliefs about facts
Speaker 1: are influenced by their values, the way our beliefs about
Speaker 1: facts are also influenced by our values. And presumably those
Speaker 1: teachers do have some say in what they want to
Speaker 1: teach in the classroom. What do you think can be
Speaker 1: done in practical terms to change attitudes of teachers in
Speaker 1: a world where teachers come from the same society which
Speaker 1: we live, and in which not quite half, but something
Speaker 1: like roughly half of the people belong to a political
Speaker 1: side of the world that doesn't take climate change. Seriously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a tricky issue. We don't have any definitive numbers
Speaker 1: about what's happening in every classroom in America, but we
Speaker 1: do know from some surveys that about a third of
Speaker 1: teachers tell their students that many scientists believe climate change
Speaker 1: is natural, which is false. That's a patently false statement.
Speaker 1: And yet a third of students are learning in science class,
Speaker 1: you know, and that is because it's, as you point out,
Speaker 1: it's aligned with these teachers belief systems. And it's an
Speaker 1: equity question. Are we comfortable with some kids learning the
Speaker 1: truth and some kids learning lies? And my reporting found
Speaker 1: there's some rough red blue divide. You can kind of
Speaker 1: roughly guess what a kid will learn in school about
Speaker 1: climate change based on whether they live in a red
Speaker 1: state in a blue state. Partly it's because there's Republicans
Speaker 1: in red states and they're more inclined to disbelieve the
Speaker 1: climate science right, But part of it is also a
Speaker 1: state law, Like every state has academic standards of that
Speaker 1: dictate what a kid should learn in a given grade,
Speaker 1: So they leave fourth grade history knowing something about Columbus
Speaker 1: or something like that. And so some states have climate
Speaker 1: change in their standards. Some states don't. There have been
Speaker 1: protracted battles over that in some states. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think lots of people would say that there's kids
Speaker 1: in every state, no matter what community they're born in,
Speaker 1: have a right to the truth. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: So you said two things that both grab my attention,
Speaker 1: partly because my day job is constitutional lawyer. You talked
Speaker 1: about equity and then you talked about a right to
Speaker 1: the truth. But let's just start with this idea that
Speaker 1: there's an equity right to know the truth. How can
Speaker 1: we say that when there's dispute among teachers and dispute
Speaker 1: among parents about what constitutes the truth, even if there
Speaker 1: is no meaningful dispute among scientists, as I agree with
Speaker 1: you there is not. I mean, does a teacher have
Speaker 1: the right to teach that the earth is flat? Does
Speaker 1: a student have the right to learn that the earth
Speaker 1: is not flat? Like? Where? What is the line of
Speaker 1: how much academic freedom a teacher has versus the right
Speaker 1: of a student to learn something the truth like not
Speaker 1: learn lies? Right? I mean it's a hard question. I
Speaker 1: mean it's a super hard question. And liberals used to
Speaker 1: be on the other side of it right when evolution
Speaker 1: was first being taught in schools in the US, and
Speaker 1: some states tried to ban the teaching of evolution or
Speaker 1: did ban the teaching of evolution, it was liberals. It
Speaker 1: was the ACLU that argued, like in the Scoop's Monkey
Speaker 1: trial which you mentioned in your book, for a free speech,
Speaker 1: freedom of academic judgment, right on behalf of the teachers
Speaker 1: to teach evolution despite the fact that the law in
Speaker 1: the state prohibited it. And that was for a long
Speaker 1: time the mainstream liberal view that teachers at the elementary
Speaker 1: school level on the high school level should be free
Speaker 1: to teach what they say and what they believe. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that's in principle an outrageous idea. We
Speaker 1: probably have a more middle ground now where we think
Speaker 1: that to some degree teachers should be obligated to teach
Speaker 1: a set curriculum, but to some degree they should have
Speaker 1: freedom to editorialize around that curriculum. Certainly, if we were,
Speaker 1: you know, in a state which is banning critical race theory,
Speaker 1: and a teacher got up and taught that the Constitution
Speaker 1: of the United States was based on supremacy, which is
Speaker 1: also a fact insofar as the Constitution included the futuritive
Speaker 1: Slave Clause and the three fifth Compromise and other features
Speaker 1: that embedded slavery, and that teacher were fired, I would
Speaker 1: be thrilled to go and represent that teacher pro bono
Speaker 1: on the claim that he or she should have the
Speaker 1: freedom to teach what he or she believes, notwithstanding that
Speaker 1: the state is banning the teaching of critical race theory.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you. I have a couple of thoughts about that.
Speaker 1: First of all, yes, but what that teacher is teaching
Speaker 1: is the truth, right, Like you wouldn't necessarily jump at
Speaker 1: the chance to defend someone who was insisting on teaching
Speaker 1: that the earth is flat. There's a fundamental difference. You
Speaker 1: can't equate the two. One teaching something that is defensible
Speaker 1: truth and one teaching something that is indefensible that it
Speaker 1: has no bearing on the truth and is only ideological.
Speaker 1: It is only a politically driven And you know you're
Speaker 1: right that. At the beginning of the fight over Darwin
Speaker 1: in schools, the argument was that teachers should have the
Speaker 1: right to teach evolition in schools, but it's very quickly
Speaker 1: evolved into a debate over whether teachers should have the
Speaker 1: right to teach creation in schools, and the courts again
Speaker 1: and again ruled that they do not have the right
Speaker 1: to teach creationism in schools. And that's not because it's falls,
Speaker 1: that's because we have an establishment clause in the Constitution
Speaker 1: that says the state can't teach a religious belief, and
Speaker 1: the courts have repeatedly held the creationism, creation science, intelligent
Speaker 1: design are all proxies for a religious belief, and that's
Speaker 1: why it's unlawful. I mean, one of the things that
Speaker 1: I teach to use the word in my first Amendment class,
Speaker 1: is that there's a weird feature of our law, which
Speaker 1: is that there's nothing in our system that says you
Speaker 1: can only teach the truth to kids, no such proposition.
Speaker 1: And indeed, state legislatures and local school boards decide what
Speaker 1: they think should be taught all the time in our
Speaker 1: country with no manifestation of whether it's true or not.
Speaker 1: I mean, they believe it's true, but that's all the matters.
Speaker 1: Whereas if it's got a religious content, then the Constitution
Speaker 1: kicks in and says you can't teach it. But you
Speaker 1: can teach I always tell them, and it's true false
Speaker 1: things any day of the week in schools without violating
Speaker 1: the constitution or the law provided those aren't religious things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is no separation of state and business in the
Speaker 1: same way that there is a separation of state and church. Right, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. There's no constitutional protection for students who
Speaker 1: want who pushed back, or who would want to forbid
Speaker 1: teachers their teachers from teaching climate denialism. So what we're
Speaker 1: talking about then, is kind of a consciousness raising project. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean what your book does is it tells us
Speaker 1: the story of what's going on out there to raise
Speaker 1: our consciousness and tell us, hey, you know, this climate
Speaker 1: denial business is ubiquitous, pervasive, and you already knew reader
Speaker 1: that it was true in politics, but I'm showing you're
Speaker 1: showing us that it's also true at the level of
Speaker 1: the schools, and therefore it's going to be arguably perpetuated
Speaker 1: over future generations. What do you think, if anything catter
Speaker 1: should be done about that. I mean, it's not your
Speaker 1: job in this book to solve that problem, and I'm
Speaker 1: not asking you too, but I'm just asking you personally,
Speaker 1: since inevitably you must have thought about that having worked
Speaker 1: on this book for a long time and written it.
Speaker 1: It's a good question, and it's not one that I'm
Speaker 1: not an activist. You know, my reporting was focused on
Speaker 1: what the problem is more than what the solution is.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of people who feel that
Speaker 1: to set students up for success, they should at least
Speaker 1: understand the fundamentals of climate change, and those fundaments tools
Speaker 1: can be distilled to eight words. It's happening, it's us,
Speaker 1: it's bad, and there's hope. And if a child walks
Speaker 1: away from an education with that basic understanding of climate change,
Speaker 1: they're doing a lot better than most adults in the world.
Speaker 1: The kids have the most at stake in this issue,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, this is not a this is
Speaker 1: an issue that will absolutely show up in their lives.
Speaker 1: And also what's at stake is that if we hope
Speaker 1: to prevent the worst outcomes of climate change, all the
Speaker 1: scientists say that we need radical action, and if there
Speaker 1: is still doubt about whether it's even happening and what's
Speaker 1: causing it, that's an innoculation against action. And we are
Speaker 1: dooming to ourselves to a three degree world, a four
Speaker 1: degree world, a world with hundreds of millions of people
Speaker 1: who are displaced, and you know all the other effects.
Speaker 1: I don't need to repeat. I'm sure everyone has heard them.
Speaker 1: So the last of those words in your in your
Speaker 1: list where there's hope, I think it's fair to say
Speaker 1: that it's happening is not controversial. It's us is not
Speaker 1: controversial among scientists. It's bad is not controversial among scientists.
Speaker 1: There's hope is indeed controversial. I heard a lecture recently
Speaker 1: by David Wallace Wells, who published a very widely read
Speaker 1: book in twenty nineteen, I think, based on a New
Speaker 1: York magazine article, and if you could sum up his
Speaker 1: book in three words, it would be there's no hope.
Speaker 1: I mean, his argument is effectively and he is a strong,
Speaker 1: you know, support of environmental intervention. But his view is
Speaker 1: that things are almost certainly already so far gone and
Speaker 1: there is so little practical capacity for change that there's
Speaker 1: really no reason to expect that we're not going to
Speaker 1: face very extreme, disastrous global consequences of climate change. And
Speaker 1: I'm not mentioning this so much to you know, to
Speaker 1: quibble at all with that there's hope. As to note
Speaker 1: that for those people who want climate change should be
Speaker 1: taught in the schools. It's not just about the science.
Speaker 1: It's about a program of interventive change, which is fine,
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with that, but that's different than scientific fact.
Speaker 1: That's seeking the possibility of political action, and that is
Speaker 1: precisely where there's such disagreement in our society about what
Speaker 1: action should or shouldn't be taken. Surely, yeah, climate change
Speaker 1: is already happening, and I think, but there's still a
Speaker 1: big difference between a two degree world and a four
Speaker 1: degree world and a six degree world. Right, so there
Speaker 1: may not be hope for making climate change poof go away,
Speaker 1: but there is a way to minimize future human suffering,
Speaker 1: and that necessarily will involve leaving some fossil fuels in
Speaker 1: the ground, which of course is a big for the
Speaker 1: fossil fuel industry. As for you know what, the I
Speaker 1: think what you're asking is whether it's appropriate to ask
Speaker 1: children to participate in this question of what should we
Speaker 1: do about it? If anything. Some people would say no,
Speaker 1: that's not what education should be about. But others would
Speaker 1: say that's exactly what education should be about. That we
Speaker 1: are creating future citizens who are going to have to
Speaker 1: participate in civic discourse, and that it's completely a central
Speaker 1: part of education to prepare them for that. But if
Speaker 1: we never know the words climate change, if we never
Speaker 1: hear those in school, we are not set up for
Speaker 1: success as individuals or as a society. So I happen
Speaker 1: to agree one hundred percent with the second view that
Speaker 1: you articulated. I think that education necessarily entails not just
Speaker 1: truth or facts, which I think is a wildly overused
Speaker 1: option of education and not very realistic in most cases.
Speaker 1: But I'm deeply committed to and I think education is
Speaker 1: deeply engaged with the idea of creating possibilities for action
Speaker 1: and for engagement in the world. So I'm completely with
Speaker 1: you on that being what education is ultimately all about,
Speaker 1: it tactically doable. Is it reasonable to then tack back
Speaker 1: and say, well, the problem with the fact that people
Speaker 1: are teaching a different view of climate change is that
Speaker 1: it's false, is that it's not the truth, when in fact,
Speaker 1: I believe at least what's motivating climate change denialism is
Speaker 1: not that people want to be ostriches. It's that they
Speaker 1: have a different normative view about what we ought to
Speaker 1: do in the world. They weigh risk differently, and they
Speaker 1: may also be ignorant but I think in many cases
Speaker 1: people are not. They have a different view of how
Speaker 1: the world ought to be engaged with, They want to
Speaker 1: do different things. And that's why it's a political dispute
Speaker 1: in the United States, because the political parties are fundamentally
Speaker 1: in disagreement about how to conduct the world and how
Speaker 1: to conduct our lives. And so the question that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to explore, and admittedly it's a hard puzzle, and
Speaker 1: so that's why I'm making a lot of noise about
Speaker 1: it now, is how can one say, well, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: teach that other side because that's not true, and then
Speaker 1: at the same time say the reason we need to
Speaker 1: teach this is we need to do certain things about
Speaker 1: it which are not about truth, but are about doing things.
Speaker 1: Those seem to me at least a little bit intention
Speaker 1: with each other. I mean, I think we're talking about
Speaker 1: two different things. I feel comfortable saying we shouldn't teach
Speaker 1: lies in school, and that shouldn't be the right of
Speaker 1: a teacher to teach something that is demonstrably false. So
Speaker 1: when we're talking about those first three things, it's real,
Speaker 1: it's us, it's bad. There is scientific consensus on that.
Speaker 1: And yet one third of teachers self report that they
Speaker 1: teach students that it's debateable, right, and so I think
Speaker 1: that shouldn't happen. I think we shouldn't teach things that
Speaker 1: are false, So we shouldn't tell kids falsehoods in their
Speaker 1: public education. And then the question of you know, whether
Speaker 1: the fourth thing there's hope, what should we do about it?
Speaker 1: If anything, that's a reasonable thing to have a disagreement over.
Speaker 1: So when we think about how to conduct a process
Speaker 1: of moving the world in a direction where a third
Speaker 1: of teachers would not be self reporting that they're teaching
Speaker 1: that there is a non existent dispute among scientists here,
Speaker 1: how do we get there? It's a really tricky question.
Speaker 1: I mean, the truth is that a lot of teachers
Speaker 1: didn't learn a thing about it themselves in school, and
Speaker 1: they are not necessarily very prepared to teach it with
Speaker 1: any depth. So, you know, there's some interesting projects out there.
Speaker 1: I think Washington State has this program right now. They
Speaker 1: have put some significant money into professional development program, so
Speaker 1: basically teaching teachers how to teach climate change. So every
Speaker 1: science teacher in the state has gone through that now.
Speaker 1: I think it's one out of five teachers receive that
Speaker 1: professional development in the first two years of the program,
Speaker 1: and it's ongoing and they're trying to get to every teacher.
Speaker 1: So programs like that can actually where they really focus
Speaker 1: on getting teachers educated on the subject, that can have
Speaker 1: a big impact. But of course, what happens in Washington
Speaker 1: State might not happen in Oklahoma. Yeah. I worry that,
Speaker 1: let's say there were a national movement to go to
Speaker 1: state legislatures and get them to pass laws outlawing the
Speaker 1: teaching of climate change denialisms, sort of like the laws
Speaker 1: that are outlining the teaching of critical race theory, that
Speaker 1: it would backfire and then you'd get a bunch of
Speaker 1: states passing laws outlawing the teaching of climate science. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm actually a little surprised that no state, as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell from your book, has yet passed
Speaker 1: a law saying to teachers, you may not teach that
Speaker 1: the climate is being changed by humans. They've tried, but
Speaker 1: nobody has successfully. Nobody has actually managed to get it
Speaker 1: past yet. Yeah, so a national lobbying approach isn't going
Speaker 1: to work. You think it's a kind of teacher by teacher,
Speaker 1: district by district effort to get good science in front
Speaker 1: of people's eyes so that they will move in a
Speaker 1: better direction. You know, I'm not an expert on organizing
Speaker 1: and change making, but from the folks that I talked to, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a major approach. Changing academic standards so that they
Speaker 1: include climate change, so that you know, every seventh grade
Speaker 1: teacher in the state must include climate change, the greenhouse effect, etc.
Speaker 1: In their curricula at some point in the year. And
Speaker 1: that's been a big push. There's been a big push
Speaker 1: to do that. And then there's been some states I think,
Speaker 1: you know, notably New Jersey just recently passed new academic
Speaker 1: standards that include climate change, not just in science classes,
Speaker 1: but in Civics classes, in English classes, I think, in
Speaker 1: a math class. Right. So like there, this is something
Speaker 1: that kids don't learn about in a single unit, you know,
Speaker 1: in seventh grade science, but they get it repeatedly touched
Speaker 1: back on it from different angles, right, not just from
Speaker 1: the scientific angle, but from the civic single. Katie, last question,
Speaker 1: based on your reporting, if you had to look forward,
Speaker 1: say ten years or twenty years into the future, do
Speaker 1: you think things are going to be any better? I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think the extreme climate events that we're experiencing
Speaker 1: on a everyday basis, it seems this year might have
Speaker 1: an impact. Or do you think that the institutional interests
Speaker 1: of the fossil fuel industry plus the political interests of
Speaker 1: climate change deniers are so powerful that basically when you
Speaker 1: publish an anniversary edition ten years out or twenty years
Speaker 1: out of this book once it's become a classic, do
Speaker 1: you think it would have to be changed a lot.
Speaker 1: Are you're gonna have to write a forward that says,
Speaker 1: of course everything has changed, or would you say, basically
Speaker 1: what I described is still true now ten or twenty
Speaker 1: years later. I really hesitated to answer prediction questions. But
Speaker 1: what I've seen is that there's a growing red blue divide.
Speaker 1: So like what I would imagine is that blue states
Speaker 1: may in ten years really be on top of this,
Speaker 1: and maybe even some red states. So where climate change
Speaker 1: is present in many different classes, kids are getting a
Speaker 1: really robust education about it, and then the states where
Speaker 1: ideologically that is not welcome, kids may be continuing to
Speaker 1: learn misinformation about it or nothing at all. I mean
Speaker 1: that said, though, I met teachers in the reddest state,
Speaker 1: kind of intrepid teachers and the reddest states and in
Speaker 1: the reddest parts of blue states, who really cared about
Speaker 1: this issue, knew a lot about it, approached it in
Speaker 1: a really professional way, and their students had the benefit
Speaker 1: of that. Did you leave the book after the research
Speaker 1: and they're writing more optimistic about our future or more pessimistic?
Speaker 1: I mean, I have a lot of despair in my
Speaker 1: heart about the future when it comes to climate change.
Speaker 1: I would say that it helped to talk to teachers
Speaker 1: who are, to paint with a very broadbrush, very optimistic people,
Speaker 1: and they're talking to the kids, and they feel that
Speaker 1: humans are great at innovation when we are forced to be,
Speaker 1: and hopefully we'll be able to get it together. I mean,
Speaker 1: especially as climate change is no longer this hypothetical, futuristic thing.
Speaker 1: It's happening to us right now, and as that becomes
Speaker 1: more and more obviously, it'll be harder and harder to
Speaker 1: deny it. What about you, what's your feeling. I've left
Speaker 1: reading your book more pessimistic than when I came into
Speaker 1: reading the book. I'm not sure what my baseline, but
Speaker 1: I was really struck by how hard it is to
Speaker 1: make the kind of change that I would certainly like
Speaker 1: to see, given not so much the institutional side, though
Speaker 1: that seemed really bad, but given the beliefs of teachers themselves,
Speaker 1: who are after all, human beings and have beliefs and
Speaker 1: values and attitudes and are not just machines who teach
Speaker 1: whatever comes out of the curricular machine at them. So
Speaker 1: that left me actually more depressed about the educational side
Speaker 1: than I came into. But I also was very grateful
Speaker 1: for the book Becaich I think is important and significant
Speaker 1: because it tells the story of what's going on, and
Speaker 1: that story enables people like me to say, WHOA, there's
Speaker 1: a real structural problem here, and we need to think
Speaker 1: long and hard about what to do about it. So
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for the book, and I
Speaker 1: want to thank you for a conversation, and thank you
Speaker 1: also for tolerating my mulling over or trying to explore
Speaker 1: what could be done given the commitments that we have
Speaker 1: to teachers and to their ability to at least to
Speaker 1: some degree, teach what they believe to be true, even
Speaker 1: where as you point out, we would really prefer teachers
Speaker 1: not to teach things that the scientific community has reached
Speaker 1: consensus on being false. Yeah, I appreciate how deeply you
Speaker 1: think about this stuff. It was a really good conversation.
Speaker 1: It was an amazing book. I really learned. I learned
Speaker 1: a ton from it. Any as I said, it's scary,
Speaker 1: it's scary. Book scared me, Which maybe is the one
Speaker 1: is sociitude. Thanks so much. We'll be right back. Talking
Speaker 1: to Katie Worth about her fascinating book Miseducation How Climate
Speaker 1: Change is Taught in America left me, as I mentioned
Speaker 1: at the end of the interview, saddened and a little
Speaker 1: bit worried about just how we can approach the problem
Speaker 1: of changing what's taught in classrooms when so many Americans
Speaker 1: themselves question climate change. One possibility, call it the optimistic
Speaker 1: depressing one, is that things will just get so bad
Speaker 1: in the foreseeable future that the man made nature of
Speaker 1: climate change will come to seem much more obvious and evident,
Speaker 1: even to Republicans who otherwise share political values that question
Speaker 1: the climate science. In this picture, things get bad, and
Speaker 1: as a consequence, views change, and it becomes slowly but
Speaker 1: gradually possible to do more. But there's another scenario in
Speaker 1: which the political parties are so deeply divided about so
Speaker 1: many aspects of the right way to live that their
Speaker 1: disagreements about the right way to address climate issues and
Speaker 1: to address fossil fuels is simply, at this point indistinguishable
Speaker 1: from people's views about science itself. On this theory, when
Speaker 1: teachers falsely say that there is no consensus among scientists
Speaker 1: about climate change, it's not just that they're saying something
Speaker 1: that's inaccurate. They're also reflecting a deeply held set of
Speaker 1: political values and ideals. And when it comes to values
Speaker 1: and ideals like that, it's pretty difficult to legislate away
Speaker 1: the teaching of things that people in fact believe. This
Speaker 1: brings us to what was for me, and you could
Speaker 1: probably hear it in my voice when I was talking
Speaker 1: to Katy Worth, a really hard problem to which I
Speaker 1: don't have a definitive answer. On the one hand, I
Speaker 1: agree with Katie that when we teach science in the schools,
Speaker 1: it should be to the extent possible, true science and
Speaker 1: up to date science. On the other hand, I have
Speaker 1: a lot of respect for people who devote their lives
Speaker 1: to teaching our kids in elementary and secondary schools, and
Speaker 1: I want them to have a degree of capacity and
Speaker 1: freedom to teach their own interpretation of what they are teaching.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, that makes it very hard
Speaker 1: for people like me to object strongly when we do
Speaker 1: not like the interpretation or spin the teachers are offering.
Speaker 1: It poses a deep problem for our conception of democracy.
Speaker 1: We don't have a ministry of education in the United
Speaker 1: States that sets a national curriculum and says what is
Speaker 1: true and what is not. And when I hear state
Speaker 1: legislature is doing things like outlying the teaching of critical
Speaker 1: race theory, what upsets me is not that I think
Speaker 1: critical race theory is true or not true. What upsets
Speaker 1: me is the very idea that a state legislature would
Speaker 1: be purporting to insist on knowing that some beliefs or
Speaker 1: ideas or values ought not be taught in school. Katie
Speaker 1: and I didn't solve this problem today, and I don't
Speaker 1: think we're going to anytime soon. But I do think
Speaker 1: that Katie's fascinating and important book drives us to think
Speaker 1: harder about these deeper structural problems that lie behind the
Speaker 1: effort to get the facts about climate change taught in
Speaker 1: our schools. Until the next time I speak to you
Speaker 1: here on deep background breathe, deep think, deep thoughts, and
Speaker 1: at least when you're not thinking about climate change, try
Speaker 1: to have a little fun. If you're a regular listener,
Speaker 1: you know I love communicating with you here on Deep Background.
Speaker 1: I also really want that communication to run both ways.
Speaker 1: I want to know what you think are the most
Speaker 1: important stories of the moment, and what kinds of guests
Speaker 1: you think you would be useful to hear from. More So,
Speaker 1: I'm opening a new channel of communication. To access it,
Speaker 1: just go to my website Noa Dashfelman dot com. You
Speaker 1: can sign up from my newsletter and you can tell
Speaker 1: me exactly what's on your mind, something that would be
Speaker 1: really valuable to me and I hope to you too.
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