Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and now our Climate Story of the Week, which we're doing every Tuesday on the show this year. In June 2020, New Jersey became the first state in the nation to adopt standards for learning about climate change from kindergarten through 12th grade. The mandate went into effect during the school year that just ended and covered most subjects, including Physical Education. They're teaching climate change in gym classes, apparently. This summer, the state is adding climate standards for two more subjects: English Language Arts and Math.

The proposed revisions to the curriculum have reignited the conversation and led to some very fiery board meetings about climate education in New Jersey and across the country. New Jersey's First Lady, Tammy Murphy, wife of Governor Murphy, obviously, spearheaded the initiative on the notion that climate education is essential to creating a climate-literate generation that will be prepared for the ever-intensifying effects of climate change as well as a new green economy. Opponents say it can become indoctrination or make kids too afraid. Let's discuss.

With us now to discuss what New Jersey's climate change curriculum includes and how this has become yet another front in the school culture wars are Dr. Lauren Madden, Professor of Elementary Science Education at the College of New Jersey, where she is also Coordinator of the Environmental Sustainability Education Minor; and Anya Kamenetz, longtime former NPR education reporter, advisor to the Aspen Institute, and author of several books, including most recently, The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children's Lives, And Where We Go Now.

Dr. Madden, welcome to WNYC. Anya, welcome back. Always good to have you.

Dr. Lauren Madden: Thank you so much for having me.

Anya Kamenetz: Thanks so much, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Dr. Madden, how are you involved in New Jersey's efforts to teach kids about climate change, just so people can get a sense of your relationship to this issue first?

Dr. Lauren Madden: I'm involved in a couple different ways. I'm a teacher educator and educational researcher, so I do a lot of work in preparing future teachers and current teachers to enter their classrooms ready to address all of the new things that they're required to. I've also worked on various different committees with the state, evaluating the standards as they've come out and as they've been developed, both with the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards, which we did in New Jersey back in 2014, as well as these new climate change standards. I wrote a report on behalf of Sustainable Jersey for Schools, and the New Jersey School Boards Association, with recommendations for a successful rollout of these new standards.

Brian Lehrer: To be accurate, did I get it right in the intro that the standards apply to subjects such as Phys Ed and will now apply to English Language Arts and Math? Because people may be wondering, how do you teach climate change in the context of those things and why should you?

Dr. Lauren Madden: Absolutely. The thing that makes New Jersey unique right now is that we are addressing climate change beginning as early as kindergarten, and we're looking at all subject areas and, yes, that includes things like PE and the arts. It's really important to do that because climate change is not a scientific problem alone. It's a problem that faces us from all sectors and it affects people in different ways.

Oftentimes, Physical Education, health is part of that. It's really important that kids know why they can't play outside on an air quality day, that doesn't work so well. They need to know the way that their bodies change as a result of different types of particles in the air or extreme heat. Making sure that we're talking about climate change in all content areas really ensures that kids understand the context as to the problem that they're inevitably going to have to solve in the future.

Brian Lehrer: Parents and educators, especially in New Jersey, our phones are open for you. 212-433-WNYC. Parents, did your children learn about climate change in school this year? What did they learn about? Are you surprised at any of the subjects that included climate change education? 212-433-WNYC. Teachers in New Jersey, schools out for the year, so maybe you're out there. Did you integrate climate change into your lesson plans for the first time in any new way under these standards in this school year? How did it go? What does anybody think about expanding climate education standards to include these new subjects? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. You can also text us at that number.

Anya Kamenetz, in an article you published for Grist titled, New Jersey is teaching kids about climate. Opponents call it 'indoctrination', you write that up until last month, the new learning standards did not drum up much controversy. What do you think changed?

Anya Kamenetz: Well, according to what I've heard, basically what happened was the original standards were updated, first of all, during the pandemic with virtual gatherings. Also, Sex Ed standards were being updated at the same time, so they drew more of the heat from what we've seen in New Jersey as well as around the country, which is Right-wing activists really focusing on schools and school boards as a means of drumming up controversy and gaining political power. As of last month, the Math and Reading standards were getting updated, and this is when we saw this controversy erupt.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote about some of the opponents of this who've been showing up at board meetings. Can you set any particular scene for us? Have you been to any in person?

Anya Kamenetz: I watched the video, and what we saw was activist after activist, clearly, these are organized folks. These are folks that are part of statewide groups, national groups, and they often speak at school board meetings and they have talking points. The talking points cover a lot of what we hear about, basically, climate denial, conspiracy theories, and then certain allegations about this being dangerous for children, scary for children. Really, really similar to the controversies that have been ginned up over things like how we teach race, how we teach history, and other unpleasant realities that are making their way into the classroom.

Brian Lehrer: Dr. Madden, I wonder what your reaction to this is. These are such different areas, how we teach about US History, including the history of race in this country, and opponents tagging that with the usually inaccurate label of critical race theory, including respect for sexual and gender differences in our schools; very different issue than how we teach about race. Teaching about climate, yet another very different issue. Yet, coalitions seem to be forming that constitute sort of unified sides in a culture war around schools. What do you make of it?

Dr. Lauren Madden: I was at the May 3rd meeting in New Jersey, and I provided some testimony. I was not at either the-- There was one in North Jersey and South Jersey as well. I think we need to just be clear that what we're talking about is some really radical extremist groups here. These folks are not the voice of parents in our state.

I'm not sure if you saw, but there was a large Fairleigh Dickinson University study that surveyed parents across the state of New Jersey, across political lines. Parents want their children to be prepared to solve the problems of the future and to have opportunities to think creatively in their classrooms and to learn about climate change. I did another study that was just accepted for publication, surveying parents in our states. Again, we're finding these same things. There's some concern about mental health and not frightening kids, and that's why we need really good teacher preparation and materials that are informative without being quite scary, and solutions-focused, but we're seeing that.

Just to be clear, these groups are extremely well-organized. They have a very specific script that they follow when they show up both at the state school board meetings and at local school boards, but they are not portraying the voice of parents in our state. They're portraying the voice of a very specific set of standards- excuse me, a specific set of parents in our state. A lot of issues that are perceived as controversial get some flak, but we need to make sure that we're giving kids opportunities to learn about the world around them. It's quite frightening that they use the term indoctrination, given that their viewpoint is so narrow, and their vision for what they want school to look like is not inclusive of multiple perspectives at all.

Brian Lehrer: Anya, this is a challenge for us as journalists, right? We want to respect when there are competing sides in something like how climate change or any subject is going to be taught in our public schools, but if it's a small radical group trying to gin up controversy and they don't actually represent very many people in the districts, then all we do is give oxygen to something that's false or fringe by even having a discussion like we're having right now.

How fringy do you think this is starting out versus how much are parents really divided, from what you could tell?

Anya Kamenetz: Well, so in national polls as well as in the New Jersey poll that Dr. Madden cited, large majorities support not only teaching climate change, but requiring climate education. There's a widespread, I think, consensus on that issue. However, there's a political divide. In that Fairleigh Dickinson poll, for example, 96% of Democrats favor requiring education about climate change, 45% of Republicans. Very big split there.

It's definitely a media question, a question for reporters like ourselves to think about, are we giving oxygen to this versus are we highlighting what could potentially become a wedge issue? Issues that advocates for climate education who range, again, across the political spectrum, people that want kids to be prepared for green jobs, people that want to inculcate civic education and respond to the desires of many, many students to be learning about these issues, how do we be aware then of how this could be used as a wedge issue? What are the messages that are getting in there that could worm their way in and cause problems or obstacles?

This notion of climate change education being scary for kids, for example, that's very real. The mental health concerns are heard; they're heard from students themselves, from parents and from teachers. Figuring out how to address that and how to disarm that, I think is something that's a legitimate question that definitely involves training and support for teachers as well as for families, as we think through how to [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: Sorry, I cut you off? I thought you were done with your answer. You want to finish that thought?

Anya Kamenetz: No, no, no, just as we think through how to address this.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey Public Radio, and live streaming at wnyc.org on the New Jersey side of all that now, as we talk about the evolving standards for teaching climate change in the New Jersey public schools with our guests, Dr. Lauren Madden, Professor of Elementary Science Education at the College of New Jersey, where she is also Coordinator of the Environmental Sustainability Education Minor; and Anya Kamenetz, longtime former NPR education reporter, author of The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children's Lives, And Where We Go Now, and the author of an article on Grist about these New Jersey climate standards.

Let's go to some phone calls here on our Climate Story of the Week. Rebecca in New Brunswick, who says she's the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Rutgers. Rebecca, you're on WNYC. Hello, Dean.

Rebecca: Hi, good morning. Yes, I'm not the Associate Dean for all of Rutgers, but for Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers-New Brunswick. I just wanted to share information about a new program that we'll be launching this fall, which is very much along the lines of the themes that you're discussing this morning. The minor for all- it's open to all undergraduates at Rutgers-New Brunswick is called Creative Expression and the Environment.

The idea here is that the arts have a really important role to play in promoting communication and open discussion of climate change and other environmental issues that we're facing collectively, and that using the arts can actually help empower people to feel like they have some control, something that they can do to contribute to solving the climate crisis. They're not just learning about the crisis in a vacuum, but they're actually using the arts to communicate, to galvanize, to inspire empathy and inspire action. The way that the New Jersey K-12 standards now encompass climate change even in arts classrooms, we think that that can also be extended to undergraduate education and to communal activism more broadly.

Brian Lehrer: Obviously, you're an advocate for teaching climate change in the context of the arts. Do you think there is an emotional response element to this? We've talked on our climate segments of the week in the past a few times about climate anxiety on the part of young people. Do you think teaching it through the arts-- You talked about empowering. Have you observed that it seems to help alleviate climate anxiety to any degree to bring this into the arts curriculum, or maybe the opposite?

Rebecca: Yes, so I don't think the opposite. I think that it's true that using the arts as a vehicle for communication and the inspiration of empathy, even across political divides, can actually help people feel like these are solvable problems. We have faced problems before and collectively, if we can think across disciplines and across avenues of citizenship and contribution, that we can address these problems collectively. The arts have a big role to play in reaching people's hearts as well as their minds. I think that we've seen all too clearly in recent years how science communication needs to be based in multimedia and cross-disciplinary modes of thinking. We can't just reach people with science information through just the minds. We also have to affect people's hearts.

Brian Lehrer: Rebecca, thank you so much for calling in. Anya, did you do any reporting on the argument that children as young as five years old are not mature enough to learn about such heavy and potentially scary topics like climate change as some of the critics have charged?

Anya Kamenetz: I did. I did a whole Life Kit series for NPR about difficult conversations. Whether you're talking about racism, or the basics of sex, or death, or climate change, the experts agree that there is always a developmentally appropriate way to address these realities that we all deal with in our lives. Withholding information from children, trying to conceal the truth from them, is never going to be the best option.

There are kids who suffer from anxiety who require a delicate approach. I understand, standing in the shoes of a teacher who would wish to talk about something simpler to address, but the fact is every kid in the New York City area lived through a couple of days of clean air emergencies. That's our lived reality collectively right here, and so glossing over it is not going to be a boon to our kids in the long term. Introducing the topic when they're young, experts say, is really going to be the best way to lay the foundation for positive action and reduce climate anxiety.

Brian Lehrer: I would imagine that climate anxiety is less threatening to children through the education about that than the act of shooter drills that they're doing with kids all the time and what that signifies to them.

Anya Kamenetz: Absolutely, and children and teachers have commented to that effect, that the scary reality is that we let in the door of our classrooms don't start or stop with climate change.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call. This is a K-5 STEM teacher here, I think. Drury in Montclair. Drury, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Drury: Thank you for having me. I was calling in because I teach this every day, and I am somewhat concerned because I feel like we've got these great standards that are cross-discipline, and we're not doing enough education for our teachers to help them understand how to teach this in a way that is developmentally appropriate.

I feel the climate anxiety. I don't think it's just sectioned off to children, but it's absolutely there in adults as well and teachers. I think there's this sense of it's safer to keep heads in the sand, but we know that that's not the right thing to do. I think it all comes down to teacher training, and making sure that we give our teachers the tools that they need to tackle these really important concepts.

Brian Lehrer: Drury, thank you very much. Dr. Madden, I know you've also spoken about how teachers can introduce climate change into the curriculum without causing anxiety unduly, right?

Dr. Lauren Madden: Absolutely. I agree with both callers that this is absolutely critical that across content areas in an interdisciplinary way, we think carefully about how we introduce these ideas to young children, and we make sure that we're being as informative as possible as well. I think sometimes people are frightened of sharing heavy information, like Anya mentioned earlier, and having hard conversations with young kids, but explaining the difference between weather and climate in kindergarten and having those children understand what you're talking about, that really lays a foundation for getting into some of the more complex information later on.

I do have to say, to go off the first caller's commentary, the art classroom and the music classroom is often a soft place for kids to land in school who are feeling anxiety of any kind. Having a place to think creatively and expressively about these things that might cause them some anxiety is almost a solution to mitigating some of the anxiety that can be brought about by teaching about climate change. The arts are such a critical place to allow kids to make sense of their feelings as they're learning.

Brian Lehrer: We're just about out of time, but we just got our first caller on hold who is calling in with any voice of dissent rather than saying some version of, "You go, let's do this." Jay in Bergen County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jay.

Jay: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I just think there's a real danger with silencing the minority views altogether. Just for scientific debate, even if the majority is 100% correct, there are going to be solutions for many of these problems. There are going to be winners, there are going to be losers. I think it's important-- and it becomes very political. I think it's important to maintain an open dialogue about all these things. I don't think the science is settled on this, even if the majority is 100% correct. I think for science purposes alone, it's important to keep a strong minority view, keep the debate going. Otherwise, it becomes propaganda, and I think there's a danger [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: When you talk about the majority, the majority is around 100% of scientists in the field, so how much of a debate do you think there really is to reflect?

Jay: I mean, is that really true? Is it 100%?

Brian Lehrer: Dr. Madden, do you want to reflect on that? Is there a number of climate scientists, or however you want to frame it?

Dr. Lauren Madden: Among scientists, it's about 97% in agreement. The only debate there within the scientific community among reputable scientific groups is among the specific mathematical models on the timeframe for changes to take place, but the scientists are in agreement that climate change is real and it's human-caused. In fact, that's why we call it a theory.

In science, theories are things like all living things are made of cells. That's cell theory. Or gravitational theory that keeps our Earth in orbit. That's the level to which we talk about climate change. This is not something that's debated among scientists at all. There are a handful of folks who've been discredited by major scientific organizations around the world that give alternative explanations, but this is much like a flat-Earth theory sort of thing to debate that climate change is happening and that it's human-caused.

Brian Lehrer: But you want to teach some uncertainty, you're saying, where uncertainty exists about the extent of things, about particular winners and losers in the economy, depending on what solutions are applied, things like that.

Dr. Lauren Madden: Absolutely. I had a conversation the other day with someone about, where do we invest our resources? Where do we think about our future economy? Is it better to diversify or to focus hard on wind versus solar? All of these different things. What are the things that happen when we're making batteries for electric cars? We need to have these conversations about the pros and cons around each of the climate solutions.

There's certainly room for debate, but the existence of climate change and how it's affecting humans and how it's affecting our planet and how it's affecting our resources, that's not up for debate.

Brian Lehrer: Right, already. Not just theory. Jay, thank you for your call, though, and for raising your voice. Call us again and be a dissenter or raise questions that you don't think are being raised by others. Thank you for that. We thank our guests on our Climate Story of the Week for this week, Dr. Lauren Madden, Professor of Elementary Science Education and Coordinator of the Environmental Sustainability Education Minor at the College of New Jersey; and Anya Kamenetz, longtime NPR education reporter, advisor to the Aspen Institute now, and the author of several books, including most recently, The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children's Lives, And Where We Go Now. She covered the New Jersey education standards debate for Grist.

Thanks both.

Anya Kamenetz: Thank you.

Dr. Lauren Madden: Thank you so much for having me.

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