Why are so many American children learning so much misinformation
about climate change?
Investigative reporter Katie Worth reviewed scores of textbooks, built a
50-state database, and traveled to a dozen communities to talk to
children and teachers about what is being taught, and found a red-blue
divide in climate education. More than one-third of young adults believe
that climate change is not man-made, and science instructors are being
contradicted by history teachers who tell children not to worry about
it.
Who has tried to influence what children learn, and how successful have
they been? Worth connects the dots on oil corporations, state
legislatures, school boards, libertarian thinktanks, conservative
lobbyists, and textbook publishers, all of whom have learned from the
fight over evolution and tobacco, and are now sowing uncertainty,
confusion, and distrust about climate science, with the result that four
in five Americans today don't think there is a scientific consensus on
global warming. In the words of a top climate educator, "We are the only
country in the world that has had a multi-decade, multi-billion dollar
deny-delay-confuse campaign." Miseducation is the alarming story of
how climate denialism was implanted in millions of school children.