Climate education is inconsistent across Canada, but these students and educators want to fix that
CBC
Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is part of a CBC News initiative entitled Our Changing Planet to show and explain the effects of climate change and what is being done about it.
For Subashini Thangadurai, it all began with science-fair projects in Grade 4. Researching climate change for those early school assignments eventually led to at-home discussions about the environment with her family and friends.
Ever since, however, she says her classroom learning about the environment has been less than inspiring.
"The mentions about climate change are very few and they're normally in textbooks that are quite outdated," said Thangadurai, now a 15-year-old youth climate activist in Calgary who is in Grade 10.
"I am quite lucky to have an Earth club at my school right now, which I'm able to take part in. But other than that, there's not a lot in the curriculum, to be honest."
What and how students learn about climate change and the environment from kindergarten through Grade 12 is inconsistent across provinces and territories, according to climate educators and students passionate about the topic. Too often, they say, it's limited to science classes.
But a wave of Canadian educators and youth climate activists are working to change that.
Spurred on by a teacher, Thangadurai joined Alberta Youth Leaders for Environmental Education (AYLEE), a union of students interested in climate issues who advocate for better environmental education.
In 2020, AYLEE published an updated look at the state of climate and environment education in Alberta and offered a clear list of recommendations to politicians and policy-makers for improving it.
This weekend, the group is preparing for a virtual education and action summit, where Thangadurai anticipates swapping ideas for school initiatives with peers and hearing from experts in the field.
"[The] climate emergency needs to be something that's being talked about at school because it's super important — and quite frankly, we don't have the time to not talk about it," she said.
Curriculum can naturally differ between Canadian jurisdictions, but in her most recent research, education scholar Ellen Field found that climate education curriculum and expectations are "piecemeal and inconsistent from province to province."
For starters, some provinces situate the topic in science classes and focus many learning expectations there, while others make climate education a component of social studies, said Field, an assistant professor at Lakehead University at its campus in Orillia, Ont. She researches climate education in Canada's K-12 school system.
A few provinces are still starting this learning by debating the cause of climate change, "which is just so out-of-step in terms of the very strong scientific consensus that we have on human-caused climate change," said Field.
