Study finds climate change seriously lacking in current college texts

‘I was never really taught about climate change, maybe a day or two but nothing in depth,’ said Rabiya Arif Ansari, a co-author of the paper who started began researching textbooks in her second year of college. ‘A lot of my peers lacked information regarding climate change so I was very curious about how people are learning it.’

In her team’s examination of climate change solutions, the responsibility of governments and organisations was mentioned four-times more than that of individuals. Only 8 of the 57 books cited transportation as an opportunity to make a sizable dent in emissions, and all failed to cover dietary choices.

The obvious conclusion drawn from this study, is that the severe nature of climate change is in no way mirrored within existing college resources.

This is likely attributable to two main factors. One, the last 20 years has seen a gradual shift in focus toward cellular and molecular biology, and two, climate change doesn’t exclusively fall into this category, given the huge social dimension of the crisis.

For as long as I can recall, textbooks in general have been criticised for being years behind current events. These resources are updated every three to four years on average, and the general structure remains more or less the same with each edition.

Perhaps the curriculum needs a shift towards ecological biology and away from book learning about tiny organisms then. We’ll see what changes are made next… in around four years’ time.