New climate curriculum says emotional should be prioritized over ‘rational thinking’

The state agency responsible for “following the science” on COVID and other health care risks, has released a new climate science curriculum for high school students. Remarkably, the curriculum is openly anti-science – emphasizing the importance of feelings and claiming that “rational thinking” is overrated.

The curriculum available on OER Commons was created in conjunction with the Washington state Department of Health and claims to “study climate impacts” in Washington state. The predominant feature of the curriculum, however, is not science but emotions, poetry, a “public participatory artwork,” and activism.

Where the curriculum does reference data, it doesn’t provide evidence, but simply assumes the results, often in contradiction to the data.

For example, the section on “Climate Change & Pregnancy,” asked the question, “Should we have children” when facing a future with climate change. They begin the discussion with a word invented by the “Bureau of Linguistical Reality” to express the desire to have children while worrying about “a future filled with suffering.”

It should be noted at the outset that this is not an accurate portrayal of the future impacts of climate change. Data from the United Nations IPCC shows that people across the globe will be wealthier in 2100 under any climate scenario. Such data-free claims are made repeatedly in the curriculum.

Instead of relying on data from the IPCC, the curriculum turns to something called the “Bureau of Linguistical Reality.” The organization’s founders call it a “public participatory artwork … focused on creating new language as an innovative way to better understand our rapidly changing world due to manmade climate change.” The webpage says they are committed to “linguistic relativity.”

A science curriculum begins with a word invented as part of an art project that emphasizes relativity.

The slide with this new word also includes notes for teachers. The notes argue that, “For too long, science and science education have prioritized my (sic) rational thinking.” Instead of rationality, the notes claim, “we must learn to pay attention to our own emotions and those of other people.” Failing to do so, the curriculum warns, “can be perceived as arrogance.” Not only do the notes dismiss rational thinking and emphasize emotion the Department of Health approved curriculum turns to emotional manipulation by insinuating students who disagree are arrogant.

There are numerous other problems. For example, they argue that heat-related impacts on pregnancy are related to the “heat island effect” – higher local temperatures caused by the presence of large areas of blacktop in cities. But the data they show from Washington state indicates the counties with the highest rate of perinatal mortality are all rural, including Adams, Yakima, Jefferson, Lewis, and Skagit counties.

The same is true of low birth weight, where the counties with the highest incidence of low-birth-weight births are Adams, Ferry, Grays Harbor, Mason, Pacific, Pend Oreille, and Spokane. The fact that so many rural counties have the highest rates of difficult pregnancies indicates that the heat island effect is not a significant factor. The data – in a curriculum about analyzing data – don’t match the claims made in the curriculum.

There are other issues with the claims made in the curriculum, but the approach is perhaps best captured by final two slides. They show a poem, with the words artfully displayed at a slant calling on “Grand Mothers everywhere of the planet to rise and take your place in the leadership of the world.” It exhorts men to “gracefully and gratefully stand aside & let them (let us) do so,” finishing with the claim that “The life of our species depends on it.”

A curriculum that purports to be about climate science has a little of everything – participatory artwork, poetry, emotion, and accusations of arrogance for those don’t agree.

What it doesn’t have much of is actual science.

Todd Myers, director of WPC’s Center for the Environment, is the author of “Time to Think Small” and is based out of Cle Elum.