My friend Katie Worth stops by to tell us about her book Miseducation: How Climate Change Is Taught in America. The book explores the effects of corporate money and politics on the education system. We discuss the various strategies fossil fuel companies are using to invade school curriculum and indoctrinate American children and throw shade on climate change. One of the most egregious tactics from fossil fuel companies is sending unsolicited educational material to public teachers in order to further deny delay and confuse the American public. This is an enlightening and enraging conversation with an incredible human being!
Miseducation How Climate Change Is Taught in America
https://www.google.de/books/edition/Miseducation/vwhGzgEACAAJ?hl=en
Why are so many American children learning so much misinformation about climate change?
Investigative reporter Katie Worth reviewed scores of textbooks, built a 50-state database, and traveled to a dozen communities to talk to children and teachers about what is being taught, and found a red-blue divide in climate education. More than one-third of young adults believe that climate change is not man-made, and science instructors are being contradicted by history teachers who tell children not to worry about it.
Who has tried to influence what children learn, and how successful have they been? Worth connects the dots on oil corporations, state legislatures, school boards, libertarian thinktanks, conservative lobbyists, and textbook publishers, all of whom have learned from the fight over evolution and tobacco, and are now sowing uncertainty, confusion, and distrust about climate science, with the result that four in five Americans today don’t think there is a scientific consensus on global warming. In the words of a top climate educator, “We are the only country in the world that has had a multi-decade, multi-billion dollar deny-delay-confuse campaign.” Miseducation is the alarming story of how climate denialism was implanted in millions of school children.
Katie Worth Website
https://www.katieworth.com/
Katie Worth tells stories about science, politics and their myriad intersections. She began her career as a beat reporter at the Pacific Daily News on Guam, and later worked as an enterprise reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, This American Life, National Geographic, Slate, Vice, The Wall Street Journal and The Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology.
Worth joined the Boston-based FRONTLINE team in 2015 and for the next six years worked on special investigative projects for the series, leading reporting endeavors in print, film, interactive media, audio and virtual reality. She held leadership roles in both FRONTLINE and WGBH’s diversity, equity and inclusion committees, efforts she considers essential to the future of journalism.
She is the author of the book Miseducation: How Climate Change is Taught in America, published in November 2021.
Her reporting has been recognized with several recent awards:
“The Virus at Sea, FRONTLINE:
Edward R. Murrow Award, “Excellence in Innovation.”
Online Journalism Award, “Topical Reporting, Pandemic Coverage,” finalist.
“The Last Generation, FRONTLINE and The GroundTruth Project:
Emmy, “Outstanding New Approaches: Documentary.”
World Press Photo Award, “Interactive of the Year.”
Webby, “Best Use of Interactive Video.”
Online Journalism Award, “Excellence and Innovation in Visual Storytelling.”
Scripps Howard Award, “Multimedia Journalism.”
National Academy of Science Communication Award.
The duPont-Columbia University Gold Baton, citation.
Overseas Press Club, “Kim Wall Award,” citation.
“Zika Uncontained,” FRONTLINE:
Digital Media Award Finalist for the NIHCM Research and Journalism Awards.
TWITTER
https://twitter.com/katieworth
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