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Subverting Climate Science in the Classroom
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Subverting Climate Science in the Classroom

Oil and gas representatives influence the standards for courses and textbooks, from kindergarten to 12th grade.

Katie Worth
Scientific American, 2022
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7

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Eye Opening
  • Hot Topic

Recommendation

Scientific American contributor Katie Worth spent multiple hours watching hearings, scouring public records and interviewing educators to uncover efforts by oil and gas industry lobbyists to fundamentally change how climate issues are discussed and taught in Texas public schools. Their efforts to alter textbooks and lesson plans, largely successful, could affect how millions of American children understand and respond to climate change.

Take-Aways

  • Oil and gas lobbyists actively manipulate educational standards for Texas school children.
  • Standards adoptions boards are bureaucratic, but their decisions largely control classroom content.
  • Most American parents support teaching climate change education in schools.

About the Author

Katie Worth is a freelance writer in Boston. She is the author of Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught in America.

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