Flunking climate change with faulty textbooks

Mark Gongloff, Tribune News Service

David Foster Wallace had this joke in which an old fish passes by a couple of young fish and says, “Morning boys. How’s the water?” And one of the young fish later responds, “What the hell is water?” The joke being that the young fish had never before stopped to consider his environment and can’t imagine being in one for which he is not perfectly adapted. As Wallace explained, “the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” Which brings us to climate. This is the water in which humans swim, but many of us are no more conscious of it than Wallace’s fish. Young humans urgently need to learn how coming changes to the climate will affect every aspect of their lives and what they can do to resist and adapt. But older humans responsible for such education aren’t always helpful.

A recent study in the venerable journal Scientific American examined climate change’s treatment in new science textbooks being proposed for use in Texas, the biggest educational market in the US after California. Each of the offerings from the three largest publishers mainly limited climate discussions to just one chapter in an eighth-grade science book, the study found. Though their climate information was mostly accurate, the books raised subtle doubts about the importance of human activity in warming the planet, hinting natural processes might be more influential than they really are, according to the study. One of the books also invited students to debate the topic — an unnecessary exercise, given the actual scientific debate about climate ended long ago.

The thin gruel in these books is largely the result of a tortured approval process that requires input from a politically elected Texas State Board of Education. Earlier this year, the board called for more discussion in textbooks of the upsides of fossil fuels. One member is an attorney for Shell Oil. Another is an oilfield-services company CEO. Yet another is on record as declaring Texas “schools are paid for by the fossil fuel industry.” Meanwhile, a Texas congressman has been urging voters to pepper the board with demands for positive content about drilling in the Permian Basin.

This wouldn’t be quite so problematic if the content in Texas textbooks didn’t end up spreading to so many other states. A previous set of books written for Texas — with far more inaccurate language about climate change — ended up in classrooms as far afield as New York and Massachusetts, the study noted. And once in the market, thanks to inertia and a dearth of public-school funding, these books can stay in circulation for many years.

Ironically, environmental groups still want the new, inadequate Texas books approved, if only because they represent a vast improvement over the state’s previous offerings. Most of the new tomes at least conform to updated educational standards Texas adopted in 2020 and 2021, which grudgingly acknowledge the reality of human-caused global warming. But the new standards are just a “meager” improvement on the old ones, according to an assessment by the non-profit groups Texas Freedom Network and the National Center for Science Education. Those old standards earned Texas a grade of “F” in a state-by-state report card on climate change the two compiled in 2020.

The better news is that only six states got an “F” in that assessment. Recent changes to Texas’ standards might just merit an upgrade to a “D,” NCSE deputy director Glenn Branch told me. Two other “F” states in that report card, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, have significantly boosted their standards in recent years, as has “D” state Indiana. Most states now score a “B+” or better. “Overall, despite Texas, we’re seeing signs of progress,” Branch said, “but we still have a long way to go.”

The trouble is, to paraphrase singer and actor Jerry Reed, we’ve got a long way to go but a short time to get there. And we’re going far too slowly. State standards may be improving, but they aren’t yet curricula. They don’t tell teachers what to teach and instead only set general goals. Actual instruction varies from district to district and from classroom to classroom.

A 2016 study found that almost a third of all U.S. middle- and high-school science teachers taught mixed messages about the causes of climate change, when they brought it up at all. More recent surveys have found that the vast majority of teachers feel ill-informed about climate science and have had no continuing education in the subject.



And this education is necessary far beyond science classes. A recent Stanford University study used artificial intelligence to compare climate-change language in 30 history textbooks in both California and Texas and found they were alarmingly similar. In both states, textbooks still treat climate change as a matter of controversy and debate and de-emphasize individual power to agitate for change. “There’s not very much around things like Earth Day or youth movements” in history textbooks, said Stanford associate professor Patricia Bromley, a coauthor of the study. “There’s lots people can do, but that doesn’t come through.”