Campus Reform reports:
Stanford prof laments high school textbooks teach climate change as ‘two-sided issue’After conducting a recent AI-based study that found influential high school textbooks in California and Texas to be similar in their instructing of climate change, a Stanford University professor is concerned that such politically different states agree on teaching the subject as a “two-sided issue.”In May, Stanford published its findings after using artificial intelligence to explore the narratives of how 30 prominent high school textbooks in California and Texas discuss global climate change.“Despite differences in state-level standards, the content of textbooks in California and Texas is surprisingly similar in the extent and nature of climate change-related discourse,” the researchers noted. “Our study indicates that history textbook reform is an important arena for expanding and improving climate change education.”The two states were selected because their history textbooks in particular are considered to “strongly influence textbook content nationwide.”Stanford associate professor Patricia Bromley, who oversaw the study, lamented that many high school textbooks teach “the science is undecided” when it comes to climate change. She claimed that as opposed to history, where it’s valuable “to be able to consider alternative viewpoints,” it becomes a disadvantage to express uncertainty in regards to global warming.Bromley and Hannah D’Apice, a Stanford PhD student and the study’s other researcher, believe that “a better approach…is to invite students to consider the complex social dimensions of climate impacts and political processes for creating policies, without misrepresenting the scientific consensus around climate change.”
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY