Posted on 11/30/2007 6:48:58 AM PST by Sopater
Vanishing glaciers, rising sea levels, ravenous droughts. The natural world today offers a broad—and dire—catalog of scientific phenomena for teachers wanting to craft classroom lessons on the topic of climate change.
As public concern about global warming increases, teachers are carving out a larger place for those issues in science classes, particularly at the high school level.
Yet educators also say they face challenges in finding accurate and student-friendly classroom activities and lessons on the topic, partly because textbooks and other materials have not caught up to a growing body of scientific evidence about climate change.
Consequently, many science teachers are turning to Web sites and resources produced by scientific organizations. They’re also sharing strategies at conferences and workshops and by word of mouth.
“The textbooks don’t do a good job of it,” said P. John Whitsett, the curriculum and instruction coordinator for the 7,600-student Fond du Lac, Wis., school district, who came up with his own lessons on climate change when he was a teacher. “Teachers are putting it together on their own, but that’s not all bad. I encourage people to go beyond the textbook.”
Teachers also face questions about how to present the science of climate change without being accused by students, parents, or administrators of harboring a political agenda.
Robert W. Penrose, a science teacher at United High School in Armagh, Pa., occasionally hears divisions about the causes and economic implications of climate change emerge in his environmental science and biology classes.
Some of his students are convinced that human activity is the driving factor causing global warming, and that stronger pollution controls are needed to cut greenhouse emissions.
Others are less convinced. Some students in the western Pennsylvania community have parents who earn a living in the coal industry—emissions from coal-fired power plants are a major source of greenhouse gases—and are wary of stronger government mandates.
Mr. Penrose, who is in his 15th year teaching, remembers first touching on climate-change issues in the 1990s, mostly among academically gifted students. He took one such group to attend a symposium on the emerging topic at a nearby college, about a decade ago.
“It probably wasn’t even in the top 10 of topics I would talk about then,” he recalled.
Mr. Gore, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, recently earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in raising awareness of the issue.
In writing classroom lessons, Mr. Penrose has tapped the Web sites of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other sources, as well as materials published by the National Science Teachers Association, of which he is a member. His approach to talking about climate change is similar to what he uses for other topics: Students must be able to back up their opinions and arguments with scientific evidence. He requires them to search for that information on their own.
Global warming occurs when greenhouse gases are emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere, trapping solar heat and warming the planet’s temperatures. While that process occurs naturally, the amount of carbon dioxide being released by burning fossil fuels and industry has risen over time, and is very likely a contributor to rising global temperatures, scientists say.
Those rising temperatures have caused ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic to melt and sea levels to rise, according to scientists, and they have coincided with more severe weather and more severe droughts, among other climatic changes. While those events are often called “global warming,” scientists say “climate change” is a more accurate descriptor, because the trend can produce erratic, and in some cases colder, temperatures in some regions.
Mr. Penrose believes human activities are contributing to global warming, though he also thinks natural planetary warming cycles may be a factor. He said he takes care to avoid presenting personal views in classes, however.
“One of my biggest fears is that I’m going to create a whole group of students who think exactly like I do,” he said. “The kids need to be involved in finding information, [rather] than having teachers be the only people supplying it.”
Officials in the 23,000-student district eventually said the film could be shown if the district’s policies were followed. Those policies require that school principals approve any movie to be shown in class, and mandate that potentially biased information be balanced with opposing views.
“I said, ‘You’re not going to show this propagandist film to my kids,’ ” said Frosty E. Hardison, a parent who raised objections. The film, he argues, presents Mr. Gore in an overly favorable light and his political opponents, such as President Bush, more harshly.
“Obviously, it’s political,” Mr. Hardison said of the film.
The National Science Teachers Association became immersed in another controversy involving the documentary last year, when it turned down a request by one of the producers to have the science group distribute 50,000 free copies of the film. The NSTA said doing so would have violated the organization’s policies against distributing materials promoting products or individuals. ("Critics Accuse NSTA of Having Conflict Over Film," Dec. 6, 2006.)
The film’s supporters, however, suggested that the NSTA’s position may have been influenced by donations it had received from oil and gas companies—a charge the group denied.
Despite the furor, Mr. Whitsett of the Fond du Lac district, who is the president of the 55,000-member NSTA, said he often recommends that science teachers use the film because of its plain-spoken and accurate presentation of climate change. “The science in it is fundamentally correct,” he said.
Textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin includes global warming in a subsection of a widely used 6th grade general science book, released in 2005, and textbooks for earlier grades discuss greenhouse gases more generally, said Joe Degnan, the editor of K-6 science for the Boston company.
The relatively limited treatment climate change receives in science textbooks today is due more to its scant treatment in state academic standards—the single largest influence on publishers—rather than any controversy associated with the topic, he said.
“Everyone’s following the same sets of standards,” Mr. Degnan said.
That absence is not surprising, according to several experts, who note that most school districts select new science textbooks every five to seven years, and that public understanding and scientific consensus about climate change were not as firm a decade ago.
Various organizations, meanwhile, have sought to provide teachers with their own resources. The Washington-based American Association for the Advancement of Science, for instance, has offered a free guide, “Communicating and Learning About Climate Change,” that explains how global warming connects to other areas of study, from energy to technology to earth science. The AAAS also staged a Climate Change Town Hall, an event that drew an estimated 1,000 educators, at its annual meeting earlier this year in San Francisco.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research, a federally financed research organization in Boulder, Colo., has offered online information on climate change and workshops for teachers for years. Last year, it produced a six-week online course for middle and high school teachers on the topic.
One enrollee was Dave Swartz, who teaches physical science and Advanced Placement environmental science at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, Colo.
Although Mr. Swartz had an interest in climate change before taking the online courses, the program helped him see the potential for using the topic across disciplines, such as biology and chemistry. He has brought up climate change in his units on hydrology, because of global warming’s potential effect on precipitation and water supplies in the arid West.
He has also asked students to take part in classroom games, in which they roll dice and examine the nitrogen cycle and the carbon cycle, to explain the various characteristics of those elements and how they behave in nature and the atmosphere.
“You don’t have to present it as an overarching topic,” Mr. Swartz said. Climate change “connects the sciences. It doesn’t have to be in any one science.”
We'll need to raise taxes of course so that schools can buy the new textbooks, of course.
Wonderful.
It is the overarching theme. It is central to everything. The most important goal anyone can have is the destruction of western industrialized nations. It's for the children.
I love the way the journalist discusses Algores pedigree without really discussing it. Just adding for emphasis “academy award winner” and “Nobel Peace Prize Winner” in a sterile academic way that in no way touches upon the many challenges to Algores views. Nor does the author touch upon the left leaning nature of the Nobel Peace Prize. Nor does the Author report the left wing fringe that Algore is. But the author speaks in dispassionate, dignified prose... I guess I must believe him ‘cause he sound so smart.
I just really want to bust the whole premise that surrounds this article.
"“One of my biggest fears is that I’m going to create a whole group of students who think exactly like I do,” he said. “The kids need to be involved in finding information, [rather] than having teachers be the only people supplying it.”"
If that's one of your 'biggest fears', I think you can rest easier tonight dude. Once the kids figure out how 'science' (as practiced in the government indoctrination centers) misled them, they'll take quite the opposite tack. That should make you quite happy then. If you are being honest about your 'biggest fear' that is.
We shouldn’t question global warming. That would be like questioning the periodic table or saying the earth is flat. The government is funding research grants therefore it must be true.
Here is my response to Congresman John Dingle, who continued to try to defend his “Carbon Tax” legislation, in his response to me.:
Congressman Dingell,
I’m impressed that the U.S. Congress was able to find 50 people who failed 8th grade science.
The Primary “Greenhouse gas” is WATER and nowhere have scientists been able to reliably model the components in nature that drive the fluctuations in the levels of water in the atmosphere.
Only 3% of the “Greenhouse gas” is CO^2 and only 3% of that is manmade.
This means that only 0.09% of CO^2 is manmade!
Please explain the reliability of models that make predictions based upon variations in 0.09% of content, when it has proven scientifically unachievable to model the 97% component?
As long as Congress continues to pay people to find problems where none exist, those people will continue to invent problems.
Sincerely,
Global warming occurs when greenhouse gases are emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere, trapping solar heat and warming the planet’s temperatures.
Factual presntation...
While that process occurs naturally,...
Factual statement...
...the amount of carbon dioxide being released by burning fossil fuels and industry has risen over time,...
Historically accurate...
...and is very likely a contributor to rising global temperatures, scientists say.
It factual that agenda driven scientists say this but it has NOT been provent o be a factor of any significance in the climate shift. The world's climate has changed much more radically by "natural" means. This is NOT science fact but propaganda and has no room in the classroom. It is much more measurable under science to tell us WHEN life begins but then that would tick off the pro-abortion folks. So that issue that has lead to the unnecessary deaths of tens of millions goes on and on...
Those rising temperatures have caused ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic to melt and sea levels to rise, according to scientists,...
Again, according to the agenda driven "scientists".
... and they have coincided with more severe weather and more severe droughts, among other climatic changes.
They have certainly coincided with greater PREDICTIONS from the soothsayers of more severe weather. For 2 years now they've told us to expect another Katrina hitting America each hurricane season. MILD seasons.
This does not belong in schools. Preach your Gaia based paganism in other venues (even movie theaters if you want).
Sorry dude. That position is claimed by 'evolution'. The world will stop functioning unless everyone believes in evolution.
All together now.
"I believe in Cosmos almighty, Maker of the heavens and the earth.
"And in Darwin, the only enlightened Son of Cosmos, our Lord who was conceived of first cousins, born into an inbred family, suffered under the Church of Rome for his enlightenment, died and was buried. He was resurrected by athiestic science and ascended to the right hand of Cosmos where all biological truth is judged according to his ideas.
"I believe in chance and selection, the supremacy of nature, the collective opinion of scientists, the evolutionary justification of all behavior, the survival of the fittest and the end of life at death."
Amen
Seeing Algore’s fraudumentary gives kids a “firm grasp” of the issue?
Nope. No bias here.
Yup!
Good Catch.
Turns out the Congress Critters e-mail response system is broken.
It continues to tell me that I haven’t filled in the Zip Code, despite my using an address 2 doors down from his Monroe, MI office.
(p.s. It worked in my initial contact.)
Hahahahah! Math eludes them, they know zip about civics (not the car, mind you,) and getting a C (like Algore) in science is par for the course in liberal scholastic endeavor; but, mein Gott in Himmel, they have this issue down cold!
I'd love to be a fly on THAT wall and find out how they plan to turn that pig's ear into a silk purse week after week . . . . . . . . ESPECIALLY in light of the recent fact-based studies that prove there is NO scientific evidence to support the concept of human-caused "global warming"!!!!
We live in an era where documentaries don’t have to be factual to be rewarded with honors as long as they are politically correct.
We live in an era where nightly news broadcasts can use forged documents so long as they are fake but accurate in their politics.
We live in an era where debates are not open to debate. The candidates of one party get to submit their own questions and call on their own plants while the candidates of the other party must exclusively be lynched by activists from the opposition party.
Which chapter is this in your collected works?
Do any questions about climate change appear on college entrance exams? Is this teacher preparing students to succeed?
The chapter entitled: "Stick to the Basics".
To whit: if you want to understand the science of climate, you need a solid background in chemistry and physics; biology and statistical analysis wouldn't hurt either.
I'm not sure if that's what you were asking, but that's the first thing that came to mind.
It appears to have been out there a while with what look like updates, so I figured you had it.
As soon as they find something other than carbon laying around in the open to burn for energy, I’ll be all over their bandwagon.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.