When a finding is replicated scores of times, hundreds of times, thousands of times, it assumes the status of a fact, Plutzer said.No teacher would encourage a class to debate cell theory, when there is no evidence for a competing theory, and neither should students be asked to debate whether significantly raising the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does or does not heat the planet.There are a few theories about why educators aren’t better at teaching climate science.One is that teachers themselves lack information to teach the subject well. Plutzer’s and other surveys have found that a majority of teachers falsely scientists believe still disagree about the cause, which would explain why they teach that.Depending on when and where they went to school, they may not have been taught the subject at all.Climate science fits most squarely under the umbrella of Earth and environmental sciences, neglected branches of school sciences. A federally funded survey of 3,500 science and math teachers found that a third of high schools don’t offer those classes even as electives. While 34 percent of high schoolers take biology each year, just 5 percent take Earth science, and another 5 percent environmental science.Even Earth science teachers were more likely to have taken biology than Earth science in college.This means many science teachers whose job it is to teach climate change never learned about it themselves.Without a solid foundation in the subject, even those with the best intentions can go awry.I once asked an Idahoan teacher whether she taught climate change.I have a whole lesson on the hole in the ozone layer! she said, conflating two very different environmental issues.A second theory is that teachers may feel overt or subtle pressure from parents or colleagues not to teach the subject.If a teacher thinks climate change is going to be sensitive in their community, chances are they can ditch it, said Plutzer.They’re not expected to cover it at great length.There’s no blowback. There is some support for this theory.The theory with the strongest support is the simplest.An analysis by Plutzer’s team found the biggest predictor of how a teacher would approach climate change was their political orientation.Relevant is that nine out of ten science teachers are white, and over half of science teachers are over forty.Children, fortunately, www.curveroyaltysystems.com%2F&stype=0&nid=2&accid=152032810&campid=396439519&agid=1250145265585687&cid=78134203233788&device=c&msclkid=182d0a519ccf18818fb26b7b9d14dd87">are less susceptible www.vacancyfiller.com&stype=0&nid=2&accid=152032810&campid=396439519&agid=1250145265585687&cid=78134203233788&device=c&msclkid=182d0a519ccf18818fb26b7b9d14dd87">to this phenomenon than www.nurseryinabox.com%2F&stype=0&nid=2&accid=152032810&campid=396439519&agid=1250145265585687&cid=78134203233788&device=c&msclkid=182d0a519ccf18818fb26b7b9d14dd87">adults, www.bertagency.co.uk%2F&stype=0&nid=2&accid=152032810&campid=396439519&agid=1250145265585687&cid=78134203233788&device=c&msclkid=182d0a519ccf18818fb26b7b9d14dd87">and www.glowgreenltd.com%2F&stype=0&nid=2&accid=152032810&campid=396439519&agid=1250145265585687&cid=78134203233788&device=c&msclkid=182d0a519ccf18818fb26b7b9d14dd87">in www.serclesoftware.com%2F&stype=0&nid=2&accid=152032810&campid=396439519&agid=1250145265585687&cid=78134203233788&device=c&msclkid=182d0a519ccf18818fb26b7b9d14dd87">fact, their www.coresashwindows.co.uk%2F&stype=0&nid=2&accid=152032810&campid=396439519&agid=1250145265585687&cid=78134203233788&device=c&msclkid=182d0a519ccf18818fb26b7b9d14dd87">views on climate www.thestorymill.co.uk%2F&stype=0&nid=2&accid=152032810&campid=396439519&agid=1250145265585687&cid=78134203233788&device=c&msclkid=182d0a519ccf18818fb26b7b9d14dd87">change www.leasedlineandmpls.co.uk%2F&stype=0&nid=2&accid=152032810&campid=396439519&agid=1250145265585687&cid=78134203233788&device=c&msclkid=182d0a519ccf18818fb26b7b9d14dd87">respond well to a robust science education even in conservative communities.Far more influential were the beliefs of their teachers.This suggests that as long as they get accurate information, some children are willing to learn it, regardless of what their family or community thinks.It also suggests that teachers hold real sway over their students’ views of the issue.But for a child to receive a robust education about recent climate change, she must have a teacher committed to the issue, particularly if she lives somewhere like Oklahoma.In 2015, researchers Nicole Colston and Toni Ann Ivey of Oklahoma State University at Stillwater asked 115 Oklahoma science teachers about their approach to climate change.More than half did not know that scientists are in consensus on the issue.A third believed that recent climate change was mostly natural.And about a quarter said concern over classroom pushback kept them from teaching the subject.Lau participated in a program that matches teachers with field scientists.She traveled to Alaska with a team researching the warming Arctic, where she helped measure the thaw of the tundra and the shift in plant life cycles.She stayed in a village whose coastal roads have already eroded into the oceans.Ever since, she has made a point to teach her students about global warming, regardless of state mandate.Lau was racing off to bus duty.Three girls stayed behind to tidy up, stacking chairs and picking up colored pencils from the floor.No, said Cadence, a tall girl wearing a purple owl shirt.My grandpa said it was fake, said Claire, whose blond hair was pulled into a ponytail.Do you? I asked them.I’m not sure, Claire said, hesitating.I was like, how could it be fake or real?I don’t know how it would, said Claire.It could possibly affect us, but part of me thinks it won’t, said Cadence.Lau came back from bus duty, I told her what the girls had said.It’s really difficult for kids like Claire. She sighed.As an educator, how do I say, well, your parents are wrong?I can’t say that.Izerman’s parents had a long list of reasons to consider moving to Oklahoma.Climate change was on it, as were health care and more job opportunities.Probably the biggest, though, was chasing a better education for their children.The move wouldn’t need to be permanent for that.So, in 1994, when three men from the big city came to her quiet Louisiana parish and convinced the local Christian Coalition to push a hogwash curriculum, she refused.Her husband was born and raised in the parish, and she moved there when she was sixteen.The couple ran a poultry farm on his family’s land to pay their way through college and then graduate school, and were glad to raise their children there as well.We’re a rural area, we’re not a rich parish, but we have a very good public school system.The discourse was apparently productive, because soon, the Livingston Parish school board received a petition from the Christian Coalition signed by 1,500 residents asking the board to put intelligent design into science classes as an alternative to evolution.They also received a proposed new curriculum guide written by the Origins Resource Association.The curriculum would, among other things, ask students to list evidence for an old Earth and a young Earth, and explain how an esoteric paper by a Nobel Prize laureate supported the idea that the second law of thermodynamics could temporarily be overridden.I wasn’t about to sit back and let these guys come in from outside to do what they want, she said.She wrote to dozens of scientists, many of whom responded with letters to the school board decrying the curriculum guide.The Nobel Prize winner himself wrote back, asserting that his theories do not in any way find an exception to the second law of thermodynamics. Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, enlisted a colleague in the biology department to help dissect the curriculum in search of weaknesses, and sent the resulting analysis to every member of the committee and school board.Some were more receptive than others.When she made an appointment to visit her local school board representative to discuss the issue, he drove his tractor out to the field before she arrived, standing her up.The curriculum committee voted 23 to 2 to reject the proposal.But rather than abide by the committee’s recommendation, the school board continued to consider adopting the curriculum.Forrest alerted the American Civil Liberties Union, who wrote the board promising a lawsuit if it approved the materials.Nonetheless, Forrest felt a thrill of success at defeating the curriculum.The three clowns from the New Orleans organization packed up their bags and left town, said Forrest.In 1859, when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species introducing evolution by natural selection, few Americans paid attention.But as the theory gained evidence, it began producing answers to certain questions that had previously belonged in religion’s domain.Church leaders with a strict interpretation of the Bible spoke out against the threat they saw in Darwinism.If one actually thinks that man dies as the brute dies, he will yield more easily to the temptation to do injustice to his neighbor, he said in a 1904 lecture.