Climate Science Students Bill of Rights
ALL KIDS DESERVE THE BEST CLIMATE SCIENCE EDUCATION AVAILABLE.
Science education that includes the facts about climate change is being withheld from kids across the country. Wyoming recently became the first state to prohibit adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) — world-class standards for K-12 students developed by the National Academy of Sciences and 26 states — solely because the NGSS include climate science. Oklahoma legislators recently voted to reject NGSS because of the climate science content as well, and similar challenges to these research-based science standards are brewing in other states.
Legislators should not pick and choose among scientific topics based on their political views. Climate change is threatening the health and well being of communities across the country. Withholding evidence about our changing climate, and the cross-disciplinary scientific facts that explain it, robs from students the opportunity to formulate solutions to the biggest global challenge their generation — and succeeding generations — will face. (Further background about the threats and the needs.)
America’s kids deserve to learn about climate change as part of a 21st-century science education. For that reason, it is time to affirm a Climate Science Students Bill of Rights.
A coalition of four science advocacy groups have launched a “Climate Science Student Bill of Rights” in an attempt to promote teaching about climate change in the nation’s schools.
The bill of rights asserts, among other things, that students have the right to “explore the causes and consequences of climate change” and “examine the data and evidence that leads to the established scientific consensus on climate change.”
The four organizations pushing the proposed Bill of Rights are the National Coalition for Science Education (NCSE), the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Alliance for Climate Education, and Climate Parents.
According to a press release by the four groups, the move is motivated by the recent decision by Wyoming’s state legislature to prohibit the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), a set of science education standards that have been adopted by 12 states.
A major factor in Wyoming’s decision to reject the standards was their references to climate change as a matter of scientific consensus. Conservative skeptics of climate change expressed concern that hysteria over climate change could kill jobs in industries such as coal mining and oil drilling.
“Climate has fallen through the curricular cracks,” NCSE programs and policy director Mark McCaffrey told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Young people have the right to know about climate change, and in some places that right is being denied.”
McCaffrey said the venture had been under consideration for over a year beforehand, but that Wyoming’s deed was a major spur to action. Even outside of Wyoming, McCaffrey said that teachers feel pressure to teach what he referred to as a “phoney scientific controversy.” Change is essential, he said, both because of the importance of climate change as an issue and because the current situation allows for unacceptable political meddling.
“Science is being denied by politicians,” he said.
McCaffrey said he is hopeful that other scientific or progressive organizations may join in the effort, and that sympathetic state legislatures might enshrine a variant of the Bill of Rights in a state’s science education standards. He said that climate change’s exceptional importance made strong action essential.
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