Educators Find Textbooks Out of Date on Climate Change

November 5, 2007 -- As the public, political, and scientific conversation heats up about climate change, teachers are increasingly covering the topic in the classroom. According to Sean Cavanaugh of Education Week, many teachers are discovering that the information in their textbooks just isn’t enough. Since the scientific consensus on climate change is relatively new (within the last decade or so) many teachers are finding that the science textbooks approved for their shelves five years ago just aren’t up-to-date. To fill the void, educators are looking online to guides produced by non-profits, scientific associations, or showing films such as “An Inconvenient Truth” or "Planet Earth" to introduce students to the topic. Teachers report that more and more students are coming to the classroom with a solid grasp of the issues, actively seeking out information and initiating classroom conversation about climate change. Educators are also trying to bring the science of climate change out of advanced high school-level environmental science courses and into mainstream science classes such as physics, chemistry, and biology.