After the past few weeks of talking about climate change, I have realized how important it is to write about it so that the world can see that this is a real thing and it is affecting us right now. This led me to think how we can educate the world better about climate change because the more people know about it, the easier it will be to change it. I started thinking about how it seems like most of the people that know about climate change are adults. This led me to think about whether or not we should educate young children about climate change. Do you think it is important for children to know what is happening to the world right now or is it too scary of a topic for children to handle? Even I get scared reading these stories about how climate change can change our world into a very devastating place. Young children might take this information about climate change and be scared for the life. But is it more important to coddle children from the future or to educate them to the point where they can help with prevention? In my opinion, I think that children are the most important people that should be educated about climate change. Their generation are going to be the people who have to deal with the affects of climate change and will be the future scientists to help us make a plan to prevent and stop it. By teaching to children now about how important it is to save our world from climate change it will cause them to be more proactive as young adults. So I started to research online educational appropriate websites for young children to explore to learn about climate change. I came upon a website called “Climate Kids: NASA’s Eyes on the Earth.” This website from the beginning is very child friendly with its appearance which I think is very important so that kids will not be too intimidated by the topic of climate change. When you look on the home page it has different things you can choose on, on the right hand side of the screen. This website has topics such as, “Weather and Climate”, “Carbon Travels”, “Energy” and “Air”. In each of these tabs they have ton of different activities for kids to choose from. They can take a trivia quiz, read an article, watch a video, or learn about the careers that look at these certain topics and help to prevent climate change. Probably the coolest thing that they have on this website is a “Guided Tour of the Big Questions”. This is a wheel that you spin that answers the big questions about climate change. It has questions like, “How do we know the climate is changing?” “What can we do to help?” and the most crucial question, “What does global climate change mean?”. I think that this website is a great teaching tool for children to look at to educate themselves about climate change. In your opinion, do you think that is important for young children to know and learn about climate change? Is climate change to scary of a topic for children to learn about? Also, what is the best way to educate children on climate change?
I’m glad you brought this up. To me, I think it is extremely important that we educate younger children about climate change. They are going to have to make different lifestyle choices than our older generations starting from a very young age. Also, I don’t know about you but things that I have known about for my whole life and have created habits around (recycling for example) are way easier to keep up if you start them young.
I think that this is a very interesting topic. I believe that the children need to know. This may be a touchy subject, but this is not an intense where “ignorance is bliss” comes into play because we are harming our planet. The only way to stop it is through education of our future generations.
I think it is such a great point to bring up teaching younger generations about global warming and climate change so that they are not in the dark about it as much as we are. Awareness is the key to any change in a society which is why having children learning about our global issues is important. I think that depending on where people are raised it has influence on there knowledge of the surroundings.
Like everyone so far, I definitely agree that this is something we should be paying more attention to this too. I look at it like this: We learn to brush our teeth at younger age to have good hygiene and prevent cavities, we should of knew the facts about climate change and prevention. Especially the fact of learning younger, they will be able to make changes that stick rather than having to change their ways of life later down the road.
This is a really good topic to bring up because it isn’t something that people ever really consider. Everyone always says that children are the future, but if that’s the case then why aren’t they being educated more about climate change? They are going to be the ones that have to deal with the future effects of climate change which are only going to continue to get worse. However, you are completely right about them being able to make changes if they are educated about it when they are young rather than having to change their lifestyles in the future.
These are really interesting questions and ones that I have wondered about as well. Thank you for posting a link to that NASA education site; it’s really interesting how they are able to make climate change a topic that is accessible for young kids (and not that scary). In response to your question about about the best way to educate children about climate change, I think it depends on how old they are.
For young kids, the best thing to do might be to provide them with opportunities to experience the beauties and joys of nature, of being out in the world, so that when they grow up, those kinds of experience remain an important touchstone in their lives. I know for me some of my best memories as a kid are of playing on the beach exploring tide pools or hiking in the mountains …. not really about climate change specifically, but I like to think that it’s an important element of education for kids.
For older kids, I do think that explicit climate change focused education is incredibly important! Given that our course is about literature, it would be interesting to do some research and see if there exists any good “children’s literature” about climate change. That might also be an interesting idea for a final project in this course.
Thanks for the insightful post!
This is indeed a very interesting and valid topic to discuss. I’m glad you brought this up because I have never thought about this before. I do feel like we should start educating children about climate change from an early age. I agree with the idea that it will help them become more proactive as young adults. Class projects, presentations, and class field trips would be a good way to start educating kids on climate change.
I really like the unique direction you decided to take with this post! It’s not something most people would think of right away, and I really like the way you are going with this. I think it is really important for children to be educated about the effects of climate change, especially so that future generations will develop better habits in hope of ensuring the safety of our environment. You brought up a lot of really great questions and points, and I also really like how you chose to incorporate the “Climate Kids” article. Seeing that the biggest concern is that the topic of climate change might be too scary for children to hear at such a young age, I think the child friendly approach this article takes would be a great solution.
This is a really good idea and I never thought about that. Kids make such an impact on almost everything and a lot of that goes unnoticed. This is a great post and I think that providing the NASA link gave a gateway for people who want to do more research.
I think it is important for children to understand climate change to a certain extent. Because they say children are our next generation and if they grow up knowing they need to save our environment they will be that way for the rest of their lives.
Great topic to write about. I completely agree with you because children do need to know about this issue. The children are the future and if we do not educate them in school then how will we, as a society, improve in the future?