In most public schools, climate change is not a standard part of the school curriculum. This is primarily due to a lack of resources, a lack of teacher expertise, and the efforts of climate change deniers to push back against this type of education. So students are not being provided with the necessary tools to live in this warming and environmentally dangerous world.
If climate change is being taught at all, it is usually just a small part of the science curriculum. Indeed, one survey of middle and high school instructors found that teachers only dedicate about one to two hours to the subject across the entire academic year. And as insufficient as this amount of time obviously is, the situation is far worse than it seems. That’s because climate change is not just a science-related concern for students, but also an economic, political, historical, and artistic concern. And none of these issues are being addressed in school. We need to be learning the lessons to prepare us for the actual world we are going to have to work, play, and live in. Our schools need to integrate climate change studies into every subject and not just limit it to science.