Most parents believe children should be taught about climate collapse in schools, but teachers and students say the issue isn’t getting enough attention – with students turning to social media to find their information.
A Public First poll of more than 1,000 parents of school-aged children found that 50% said climate change was the most important issue for children, while 42% said their children had spoken to them about protecting the environment The problem.
Climate issues are discussed with parents far more often than other political issues, with only 13% of parents saying their children have discussed immigration with them, and 15% saying their children have spoken to them about Brexit.
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In a research focus group for the UCL Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education, teachers say students are much more aware of climate change than older generations.
The majority of parents (84%) say their children should be taught about climate change, and most also want their children to learn about the subject at school – while only 37% think their children should learn from Climate change is learned from books, while 11% said kids should learn about the topic from social media.
Teachers say early exposure to climate change education is important for children, but warn that if schools don’t cover the subject, students may turn to online resources and be misled.
“I think there’s a lot of information that’s easy to get, but unless it’s a top hit on Google and students hit it for the first time, there’s a good chance they’re getting potentially biased opinions,” a second-level assistant head from Northwestern told the study. personnel.
While most parents believe their children have learned about climate change in school, some students and teachers say they haven’t had an environment class in years. One secondary school teacher said climate change education “could be a tick box, a lesson, if that’s the case”.
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One student said: “I get most of my information from the internet and social media because even though it gets pushed at my school, they don’t really do anything. They just mention it occasionally.”
Teachers said they feared it meant climate change would be seen as a social media “trend” that young people lost interest in as other issues such as the coronavirus emerged.
One teacher said young people might even avoid discussing climate change because they are so anxious about other post-pandemic issues that they “really don’t have the ability to think about things like climate change at the moment” and are just “trying to make a difference.” live this day.”
Faculty also said they themselves needed to learn more about climate change to feel confident teaching it.
