Pirate's Cove

This is so they aren’t turned into terrified emotional wrecks

How to Teach Climate Change Without Terrifying Your Students

After a year in Bertha Vasquez’s class at George Washington Carver Middle School, 13-year-old Penny Richards says she reads climate news while she rides the bus to school.

Richards and 20-odd seventh graders sit transfixed as Vasquez tries to tease out the difference between the greenhouse effect and global warming by tossing out absurd half-truths. “Carbon dioxide’s completely harmless,” Vasquez says. Should we ban Coca Cola because of the carbonation?

Penny’s hand shoots up. “The greenhouse effect”—which keeps our planet warm enough for life to survive—”is completely natural,” she counters. “With mining fossil fuels, you’re taking something out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere.”

These days, big questions about energy use and ecological balance punctuate Vasquez’s classes throughout the year. Her students meet climate scientists and calculate how many desalination plants it would take to turn rising seas into a sustainable source of fresh water (too many).

There are a couple layers here. First, schools seem to be wasting a lot of time on this kind of claptrap, working to indoctrinate fragile minds, and often making them emotional wrecks. What they are not teaching them are the basics of how to get a good job, how to think critically, understanding math, English, science.

But, there’s another layer here which occurred to me, other than the Hotcoldwetdry thing: can we really hold most Special Snowflakes responsible for being Special Snowflakes? It seems they are being taught to be annoying, entitled, special wackjobs by adults, including in schools. They are being taught this spreading awareness and we’re doomed stuff. Is it any wonder that so many kids and young adults are so nutty? It doesn’t just happen overnight. Adults, including teachers, are creating future adults who will be unemployable and unproductive in adult society. It’s child abuse.