No Climate Change Education in our schools?

The debate around climate change in the science curriculum rages on in the press with a letter published in yesterday’s Guardian and signed by a number of educationalists.

This is response to the news that climate change is to be dropped from the national curriculum.

My immediate and emotive response to this is that the government has this wrong and must immediately change their policy and include climate change within the science curriculum.

On reflection, I think that the following points should be taken into consideration.

Primarily, we need to shift our understanding of what the National Curriculum is and move back to it’s original intention. The National Curriculum is now viewed as a prescriptive measure that binds teaches, rather than laying out an entitlement for all our young people.

Should young people in this country have an entitlement that they can and learn from professional educators about climate change and sustainability? The impact of people on the planet and the choices we make? I believe firmly, ‘yes’.

The second issue is where in the curriculum these subjects should be taught. Should it be the science curriculum? Or should more emphasis be put on basic scientific processes? Participants in this debate, do not seem to have pointed out that this debate only concerns the science curriculum and not the curriculum content for other subjects such as geography. The relationship between people and planet and the processes involved could best be taught through the rigours of geography.

Last, the detractors of teaching climate change at all have used the faddish argument. Climate change is the issue du jour and as such can be included as a prescribed topic, but schools are free to include it as a topic or case study. My gut feeling on this is that far from being the issue du jour, climate chage, the increasing energy in our planet’s atmosphere is here to stay as an issue we need to understand properly.

Digital Explorer fully supports a pupil entitlement through the National Curriculum that allows for an understanding of climate change through robust, evidence-based classroom teaching. We look forward to seeing the government’s advisers recommendations for the teaching of geography.