How Teachers Influence their Students’ Opinions about Climate Change
New Study Published
This recently published study, How Climate Change Beliefs among U.S. Teachers Do and Do Not Translate to Students, surveyed the opinions of 369 students and their 24 teachers in North Carolina. Specifically they asked about whether climate change is occurring, and whether it’s being caused by human activities, as well as some more specific questions to gauge knowledge about climate change. The authors then analyzed the responses to see if there were any correlations between the teachers’ knowledge and beliefs and those of their students.
The Findings
From the abstract:
We found that teacher beliefs that global warming is happening and student climate change knowledge were the strongest predictors of student belief that global warming is happening and human caused. Conversely, teacher beliefs about human causes of global warming had no relationship with student beliefs, suggesting that science teachers’ low recognition of the causes of global warming is not necessarily problematic in terms of student outcomes.
The Implicit Assumption
The authors clearly express a preference that teachers influence their students in favor of believing that humans are the main cause of climate change. This implicitly assumes that the government, whether state, local or federal, should actively seek to shape the opinions of students. This is implied by their reference to the beliefs of students as ‘outcomes’.
Strategizing about how teachers should influence students’ opinions
They also note that students, from middle school, are able to form opinions distinct from those of their teachers. In fact, students with more knowledge of climate change (as measured by their survey) were more likely to believe that humans are the main cause of climate change, whether or not their teacher believed the same. Based on this, the authors suggest that presenting more information about global warming/climate change may be effective at shaping students’ opinions in favor believing that humans are the primary cause of climate change, even if their teachers do not believe that.
But, should government be actively shaping the opinions of children?
I accept that humans probably are driving a substantial portion, and maybe even the great majority, of observed global warming. But that’s not the point. It’s not enough that to agree with precisely how they aim to shape students’ opinions in this particular case. The more fundamental question is, should the individuals running government and its educational bureaucracies be actively shaping the opinions of children in any way whatsoever?
I say No.
I don’t like the idea that government institutions are actively seeking to mold popular opinion, starting with children, who are required to attend schools. Although parents do have other options, including private schools and homeschooling, they must pay for those options on top of the taxes they are required to pay to support government-run schools and the government education bureaucracy. Furthermore, government exerts a great deal of influence over what can be taught in private schools and even by homeschoolers.
Isn’t it a Conflict of Interest?
It wouldn’t be reasonable to trust, for example, a candy company to provide complete and fair information about the health effects of their products. Would you feel safe trusting only tobacco companies to inform you about how their products might affect your health? In cases like those and many others, politicians and bureaucrats enact laws and regulations in the name of protecting ordinary people. Even if one believes their stated reasons, it’s difficult to believe that the measures they enact are truly effective. Nevertheless, those laws and regulations are premised on the notion that those who are in the business of selling products and services cannot be trusted to serve the best interests of their customers.
I disagree with Naom Chomsky on some important matters, but on this he is correct:
However, if the government is the primary shaper of public opinion in general --not only about climate change and what should be done about it-- does this not pose a conflict of interest? Do you trust the bureaucrats to educate children to have a healthy skepticism about the role of government, and the intentions of bureaucrats and politicians? I don’t.
What do you think?
S. Lan Smith
Kamakura, Japan
September 11, 2016
Thanks to Pixabay and others for the free images.
Living and teaching in NC as I do, I know that public school teachers also often skip state-mandated coverage of biological evolution because of a conflict with their personal beliefs. Should the state also take a pass on this issue? Does that count as indoctrination?
Thanks for commenting.
Once the state controls education, I do not understand how to answer such a question.
One could just as well ask what is the correct way for an overseer to whip a slave.
Thinking about this more, I remembered a passage from Blood on the Fields by Winton Marsalis, about the history of slavery and black people in the USA.
I just found the CD and listened to it again, Disc II, track 3, "Oh we have a friend in Jesus", the first two lines:
Many present day Christians who consider that they do, and believe that everyone should, worship their merciful and just God, would be appalled at the institution of slavery in general and the way that slave owners indoctrinated their slaves.
I believe education should be fact-based - which is to say reflective of the current state of scientific understanding. If there is not overwhelming consensus around facts, then what is known, theorized, and unknown should be clarified. So yes, I do think schools should teach climate change. And no, I do not think teaching climate change is some form of creepy social engineering.
Your comparison with candy companies and tobacco companies doesn't quite fit. The dep't of education is not an oil company.
Thanks for the comment.
To me the fundamental question is not "Should schools teach X, in this specific way?", but rather
"Should the individuals who control government also control education, including what is taught and how?
I did not claim that the department of education is a company of any kind, and my argument in no way depends on it being any sort of company.
Is it not clear that the individuals who control any educational institution, whether public or private, will have incentives to teach, and not to teach, certain things to children. A private school owned and run by corporation X would have an incentive not to teach anything that might encourage negative attitudes towards corporation X or its products. Similarly, will politicians and bureaucrats not refrain from teaching skepticism about the role of government? Will they not have incentives to teach that government should control education, and that government should force everyone to pay for it, and that government should force everyone to pay for measures to mitigate climate change (whether or not those measures actually work), etc?
That's why it's clear to me that letting government control education is a dangerous conflict of interest.
So you want an independent organization that only does education, and which has no links to other organizations (government, nonprofit, or corporate) that could lead to conflicts of interest? Is that more or less correct?
The bigger problem that I see is the overall industrial model of education, which says that a better education is one in which more facts are pushed into students in less time (regardless of who it is doing the fact-pushing). This is what creates the conflict between a Socratic method, which forces students to come up with their own answers, and the ever-growing database of knowledge. It's the same problem in other disciplines, but exaggerated in science because we put a lot more money into scientific research. Depth of questioning and critical thinking require are skills that require time and practice.
That's the main benefit of indoctrination from a process point of view; it's fast, and it doesn't require a teacher to be patient, or to understand the topic deeply themselves (which most of our teachers don't because they take more education classes than science classes). http://www.nsta.org/about/positions/preparation.aspx
What often happens is that a teacher has to choose a small number of particularly controversial issues (of which biology has a lot) and do some kind of debate or critical thinking exercise, without necessarily coming to a conclusion (which would piss off parents) and spend the rest of their limited time lecturing on consensus facts, regardless of how immediately useful those facts are to that group of students. How many people really need to study protein synthesis and glycolysis multiple times over the course of their k-12 and college careers? They don't, but no-one is angry about the citrate cycle, except perhaps for the students, and their voices don't count.
While most people would agree that climate change is happening, it remains to be seen how effective a teacher's efforts are in influencing student opinion and beliefs towards climate change. Its check resume planet reviews and gain new things about the education. In this post we will explore the research on the subject, with particular attention paid to how teachers influence their students' opinions about climate change.