N.B.'s high school climate change curriculum oldest in country

High school students in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are least likely to be taught the "overwhelming scientific consensus" about climate change or its impacts and how they can tackle them, says the lead author of a university study. 

Seth Wynes, a PhD student at the University of British Columbia, says students are being taught about climate change but that the two eastern provinces are teaching from the oldest curriculum documents.

The Canadian co-author of the study published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Plos One laid out his model for a comprehensive climate-change curriculum.

"These facts are the earth is warming, it's because of humans, experts agree on it, it's bad and we can fix it," said Wynes, who wrote the study with Kimberly Nicholas of Sweden's Lund University.

While Canadian provinces do a good job of teaching that climate change is caused by humans, Wynes said some jurisdictions don't focus on the scientific consensus or the solutions. 

"The same was definitely true of New Brunswick," the researcher remarked. 

Wynes said looking at solutions for climate change is important because if students don't understand that climate change can be solved then they won't be motivated to help tackle the problem. 

Don't challenge consensus, says researcher

The study's author said other provinces's teaching materials cast doubt on what is causing climate change. 

"They may have, for instance a statement that climate change may be caused by humans or students should partner up and debate with other students about whether climate change is happening and try to find out both sides." 

Wynes said that approach of encouraging students to debate the topic may mislead them about how certain scientific consensus is about climate change.

He said the provinces with the best curriculum were Ontario and Saskatchewan which included coverage of climate change in their mandatory science courses. 

Wynes added that while it takes time to introduce new curriculum into courses, reviewing the content regularly is important because it could uncover out-of-date materials.

The researcher said he is optimistic there will be progress with the curriculum in the near future.