As another summer winds down and millions of students return to school, a new trend is emerging in K–12 classrooms throughout the country: the integration of climate change education in a holistic manner across the spectrum of subjects.

Consider New Jersey, "the first state in the nation to include climate change across content areas."  In 2020, the Garden State adopted the New Jersey Student Learning Standards, which "are designed to prepare students to understand how and why climate change happens, the impact it has on our local and global communities and to act in informed and sustainable ways."

For students in kindergarten through second grade, the Visual and Performing Arts standards include "examin[ing] global issues, including climate change as a topic for dance."  "Identify, share and describe a variety of media artworks created from different experiences in response to global issues including climate change."  And "[d]escribe why people from different places and times make art about different issues, including climate change."

For students in grades three to five, the Social Studies standards include "[d]evelop[ing] an action plan that addresses issues related to climate change and share with school and/or community members."  And "[p]lan and participate in an advocacy project to inform others about the impact of climate change at the local or state level and propose possible solutions."

For students in grades six through eight, the World Languages standards include "[d]emonstrat[ing] comprehension of brief oral and written messages found in short culturally authentic materials on global issues, including climate change," as well as "[n]am[ing] and label[ing] tangible cultural products associated with climate change in the target language regions of the world."

And, lastly, for high school students, the Comprehensive Health and Physical Education standards include "[i]nvestigat[ing] how local, state and global agencies are addressing health issues caused by climate change and share this information in an appropriate setting."

Make no mistake: this is not exclusive to New Jersey.  In recent years, several other states, including Connecticut, California, and Oregon, have adopted similar standards that mandate climate change education be ubiquitous across all subject areas.

What's more, in 2013, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were released.  As the New York Times describes, "[a]mong many other changes, the guidelines call for introducing climate science into the curriculum starting in middle school, and teaching high-school students in detail about the effects of human activity on climate."

Currently, 20 states, including the District of Columbia, incorporate the Next Generation Science Standards.  Incredibly, more than 70 percent of U.S. students attend schools that have adopted the NGSS or similar standards.

Here is the problem: climate change is not settled science.  It is a fringe theory that lacks scientific rigor and therefore should not be taught to 70 percent of U.S. students as the gospel.

I doubt that most teachers will take a fair and balanced point of view when it comes to teaching climate change in the classroom.  I say this because I was a high school social studies teacher for more than five years and witnessed countless cases of my fellow colleagues (most of whom were not science teachers, mind you) taking it upon themselves to inject climate change rhetoric in subjects ranging from math to economics to psychology.

I also doubt that the climate change curriculum will include the dark side of the so-called climate crisis.  For instance, will these lesson plans detail the fact that most of the solar panels and wind turbines are made via slave labor in China?  Or how child and slave labor in countries like the Congo plays a key role in the supply chain for rechargeable batteries?  Or the Climategate scandal?  Or that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are down 20 percent since 2005?

If climate change is now part of the curriculum, it is essential that teachers refrain from fear-mongering and present the topic in a neutral fashion.  When I was pursuing my master's degree in secondary education, we were constantly reminded that our job was not to tell the students what to think, it was to teach the students how to think.  However, that was several years ago.  It seems that times have changed since then.

For the brave teachers who dare to defy the "climate change is an existential crisis" narrative, and actually long for their students to become rational, logical thinkers, there is a resource that I highly recommend: Climate at a Glance for Teachers and Students: Facts on 30 Prominent Climate Topics.

As the book's editor, H. Sterling Burnett, notes, "[c]oncerning climate change, too many science classes have become laboratories of indoctrination, teaching students what to think about this important topic, rather than how to think about it and reason through it based on facts and using the scientific method."

We are on the edge of a slippery slope when it comes to the indoctrination of our youth in schools.  Today, climate change (not to mention transgenderism, Critical Race Theory, and other controversial subjects) is being taught more like religion than science.  This does not bode well for the future.  Moreover, given the lousy test scores in math, science, and reading, perhaps it would be best to focus on the basics instead of brainwashing students with climate change hysteria.

Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute.

Image: PxFuel.