Quebec students feel 'betrayed' by lack of climate education

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Skyler St. Louis remembers when her elementary school teachers would bring her and her classmates outside to pick up trash, to try to teach them about protecting the planet.

"I remember being so passionate about it," said St. Louis, now a second-year student at John Abbott College in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, in Montreal's West Island.

But that spark — that care and concern for the natural world — isn't nourished by the education system, she said. 

Somewhere along the way, St. Louis said, it gets buried by other assignments, other subjects, other core competencies that must be met, leaving another generation unprepared to face what will be the biggest challenge of their lifetime — climate change. 

"I feel like I am betrayed by the education system a little bit," she said. "I just wish that we didn't let that passion die."

That's why St. Louis and her classmates are calling for a host of changes on their campus and for more robust climate education in Quebec overall, including core courses on climate change for all students.

WATCH | Education system is 'failing us' on climate change, students say:

Sofia McVetty, a second-year science student at John Abbott, said other than part of a unit in her first-year biology course, the only climate science education she has received has been in electives she has sought out. 

She said not only should climate science be a larger core requirement to get a science diploma, it should be a requirement for all students.

"[It's] really frustrating and a little bit disappointing — given that climate change is really one of the big challenges that our generation is going to face — that we're barely learning about it in school," McVetty said.

Quebec's ministries of education and higher education did not respond to requests for comment about how climate change is addressed at the elementary, secondary and CEGEP levels.

But research by Ellen Field, an assistant professor of education at Lakehead University, found a "piecemeal" approach to teaching climate change in Canada.

The 2015 Paris climate agreement included a call for countries to adopt climate education and training strategies, but Field said Canada has not yet done so.