Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Yale-NUS associate professor of social sciences and humanities, we have to lead students to express correct emotional responses to climate change issues, rather than just presenting them with facts and letting them draw their own conclusions.
To Teach Students about Climate Change, ‘Just the Facts’ Isn’t Enough
We also need to talk about emotions and discuss pathways to action
By Matthew Schneider-Mayerson on September 28, 2021
After the latest gut-wrenching Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, with the United Nations Climate Change Conference ahead, and with the school year in full swing, a question arises: How should we be teaching young people about climate change?
…
I’ve taught about climate change for over a decade, and I’ve found that two critical elements are frequently overlooked as we teach students about the warming world. Failing to include them in the classroom not only leads to an impoverished understanding of the subject, but inhibits our collective ability to respond. These elements apply to teaching outside the classroom, too—whether it’s practiced by parents, grandparents, siblings or mentors.
The first is emotion. How should students feel about climate change? Emotion norms guide us on how to feel about different issues, but these norms tend to prioritize certain topics (such as intimate relationships) and ignore others (such as collective or global challenges). Some of my students enter my classroom having experienced significant climate anxiety. For others, I have the heavy responsibility of opening their eyes to some deeply troubling realities. At that point I may be the person in their lives who knows and cares the most (publicly) about climate change. As such, they unconsciously take cues from me about how one might feel about the subject, just as they take cues from their friends, public figures and people they encounter on social media and in films, TV shows and literature.
Should they respond to the climate crisis with a sense of objectivity and disinterest? That is what most teachers are trained and frequently incentivized to demonstrate: just the facts, please. Should they feel despair and hopelessness? Many students leave classes that discuss environmental issues in such a state. Should they feel blindly optimistic, despite the avalanche of bad news? It’s painful to see my students suffer, so there’s a temptation to end my classes by saying, “With the right policies and innovation, everything will be fine,” even if it’s not true.
Or should students acknowledge, feel, discuss and process their emotions—emotions that attest to their underlying care, concern and connection to the natural world? Should they use these feelings, hard as they are, as fuel to take meaningful action? This is what I now try to encourage and model for students. It begins by admitting to myself that teaching is, among other things, an affective demonstration, and that my students are carefully (if unconsciously) attuned to my performance.
That puts an additional burden on teachers. Not only must we stay up to date with a subject that is constantly developing and craft classes that are both educational and engaging during a pandemic, but we also have a duty to demonstrate an emotional orientation towards climate change. That’s hard; perhaps it’s unfair. So is climate change. It’s time we acknowledge that emotion is a critical aspect of learning about and responding to it.
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Read more: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-teach-students-about-climate-change-lsquo-just-the-facts-rsquo-isn-rsquo-t-enough/
Yale-NUS claims their mission is “… As a community, we aim to provide every member with a transformative experience by encouraging habits of the mind (such as creativity, curiosity and critical thinking) and character (integrity, professionalism and ethic of service). Central to the transformation process is our engagement with diverse modes of enquiry and a commitment to challenge our assumptions. …”.
I’m curious about how the rigidly proscriptive teaching style Professor Schneider-Mayerson describes teaches students creativity, curiosity, critical thinking, and helps students acquire the self confidence to challenge assumptions.
Their “duty” has long since stopped being even “presentation of facts”.
Facts are unimportant, it is the ideology that matters. They do a good job in indoctrination of young generation based on well tested and tried methods employed by communists. It took 70 years to uproot them out of East Europe, hopefully it will not take that long, but they are preparing ground that even onset of a LIA tipe of cooling will be put down to that horrible CO2 and industrialization that has brought undreamt prosperity to the most of humanity all around the globe.
This whole piece sounds like it’s right out of Robin’s work at http://invisibleserfscollar.com/. Lots of the buzz words and concepts that have been worked into modern Western education over the last couple of decades.
What the heck has happened to the Left in America? In the 50’s and 60’s, the mantra of the beatniks, hippies and peaceniks was, “Question Authority!”. Now, nearly all people aged under 30 lap up the spewings of leftist “authorities” with unquestioning obedience. Why? I think because the American people have allowed all our major institutions to be taken over by the Radical Left.
Now the left wants to BE the authority, and also to squash any dissent. There needs to be a shooting war and their cause put back 100 years.
They have decided that George Orwell’s 1984 is an operating manual.
I nearly threw up after reading that gut-wrenching crock of S..T.
I don’t want anyone this stupid (or corrupt) teaching my kids.
I ask you, does this look like the face of a guy who voted for Bernie Sanders or what?
If it wasn’t on the front of his head I would have sworn it was something else altogether.
Does he have a man-bun behind that libtard expression?
You can save a solid quarter of a million by skipping the Ivy league mis-education.
If that isn’t a recipe for emotion driven indoctrination and propaganda, I don’t know what is.
Yes he’s straight of the Jim Jones school isn’t he?
Do kids know what Kool Aid is these days?
That question came up at my house, and my 30-somethings remember Kool Aid.
It’s like listening to a Greta speech.
All emotions and indoctrination, no facts or logic.
Unsurprisingly, this is what actually resonates with American Democrats – who consider themselves the party of Science.
“…no facts, or logic.”
If they used facts and logic to teach climate change, there would soon be no need for professors to teach climate change.
He doesn’t know facts. He’s a professor of social sciences which means he doesn’t know his head from his arse.
It has been noted that any area of study that includes the word “Science” in its name simply isn’t science? Just thinking.
or rather the party of “The science”.
And this has been a recipe for several years. Back in early 2018 over at the massively leftist “Climate Crocks” blog, the blogsite owner trumpeted the declaration offered by PhD ecologist Sarah Myhre that was — I kid you not — “People Respond to Emotions, They Don’t Respond to Facts,” and why it was important to appeal to everyone using this tactic in order to solve the global warming problem. Making matters worse and more comical, she tearfully added, “You want to introduce people to the field of climate science, you gotta use this- you gotta say something like, yeah, this hurts, this is scary. You have to say, ‘hey, I want to ski with my kid in the future’ …” To read more on that wipeout, check out my blog post on it here, where I pointed out how well that same old 2009 emotional line worked out for late-night comedian David Letterman on how sorry he was that his 5 year old would grow up not seeing snow.
The stories of Chicken Little and The Boy Who Cried Wolf need to be added to the curriculum as well to ensure a complete description of the problem.
Dare we mention Hitler Youth. If the teachers & schools are so eager for change & love money being spent on green energy then encourage the schools to be self sufficient with energy, stop buying products with fossil fuel derived plastics & other reduction/mitigation projects. They may already have Solar panels on the roofs which help during the day but what heats the rooms before morning classes start & the sun has barely risen (gas or grid supplied fossil fuel or renewable?). Are these teachers all driving EV’s? The problem is they want others to do the hard work & pay for (subsidise) the costs.
How many teach by yr 10 (~16 year olds):
1) Volts, Amps, Watts, kW, kWh, MW, MWh, GW, TW.. ?
2) reading home energy meters & how much energy (peak, average & kWh) for various home appliances?
3) the demand curves of electricity through a typical day, lower on weekends, lower during Autumn & Spring?
4) the heat capacity & energy conduction/convection/radiation of water, air & earth?
5) calculating heat loss/gain of buildings with different materials/designs & how much air conditioning & energy is used to maintain temperature differences?
6) the diminishing returns of thicker insulation or strength of the weakest link?
7) nameplate capacity vs daily/yearly energy production & capacity factors?
8) conversion losses for DC to AC & AC to DC, charging/discharge losses?
9) battery cycle life & equipment design life, maintenance costs?
10) TCO, opportunity cost, cost comparisons vs outcomes (value for money)?
11) natural climate variability & how it affects energy needs & non-scheduled generators (wind & solar)?
12) why an energy mix is required?
13) CO2 greening earth, increased food production, less winter deaths?
14) additional emissions caused by protests blocking roads (cars sit idle) & immediate risk to people with medical needs (reaching Drs, medical tests, cancer treatment etc.)?
15) what products use fossil fuels & energy to make?
16) critical thinking not blind faith?
17) a lot of other topics, facts & measurements discussed by all scientists including those mentioned hear on WUWT to be more pragmatic & informed emotion (instead of uninformed emotion)?
Yes, propaganda driving misguided emotional responses are why climate science is so broken to begin with. Promoting additional emotional alarm doesn’t help, but definitely highlights the general nature of leftest claims as driven by emotion rather than logic, reason and science.
Can you spell “brainwashing?”
Science! If the 18th century where societies run by superstition and emotion were replaced by ones based upon reason was known as the “age of enlightenment”, what will future social scientists (if there ever are any) call the 21st century?
The age of intentional ignorance.
…. or more likely The Age of the Purposeful Ignorance.
The Age of Theocratic Advocacy
Brave New World
…with feelings
I have always objected to dignifying these areas of study by pretending they are science, they are nothing of the sort.
After experiencing a few negative experiences from a too close relationship with the “social” sciences, I’m firmly convinced that “science” is misapplied. If the practitioners ever did understand science, they seem averse to applying it in practice.
The age of switch-off the lights (either you do or we will order a blackout).
The Age of China,
If you’re old enough to remember the 70s and 80s, you probably read the exact same stories about China’s economic miracle and how they were going to be the next economic super-power. Except back then they spelled it “Japan”.
Japan didn’t have a billion workers and huge natural resources.
My thought exactly! He seems to advocate anti-science!
He should focus on facts and teach his students to leave emotions at the door!
The Return of Medievalism.
The age of narcissism (one might hope ; )
It’s the natural result of the “age of atheism”, it seems to me. For if there is no Later (in the mind of a human), then by default there is no logical reason to do other than seek to experience mostly pleasant times, and to insure a minimum of unpleasant times, during the handful of decades in which one can experience anything at all.
age of incompetence maybe?
So an “associate professor of social sciences and humanities” is teaching about climate change?
Yes, because that’s what Climate Change actually is. It’s about taking control of humanity, not the climate.
“rather than just presenting them with facts and letting them draw their own conclusions.”
That might be appropriate in kindergarten. That’s where Yale is heading.
… and possibly a bright thermodynamics student got no job and is serving hamburgers in the restaurant.
If he was a bright young thermo student, he would have a job, not serving hamburgers or teaching climate social science.
Are you sure? It must be great to live in the USA, all bright students get jobs in their scientific areas!… not common in other countries…
Of course, because it is a social science. It is entirely based on feelings and emotions.
At best, “climate change” is a tautology. At worst it is pure equivocation and a shocking appeal to ambiguity. It is best taught (if taught at all) by the pseudo sciences as a means of indoctrination.
Another academic who’s trying to recreate the subject matter to fit their own world view, i.e., just more post modern nonsense. An emotion, and there are many are, by definition, subjective reactions, subsequently there is no correct response.
There may be no correct response, but I bet in his classroom there is an incorrect one.
End their trust fund tax exemption, all of these …. censored …
Scneider-Mayerson should admit what he is teaching is not science, but religion. When what you feel about a subject is as important as being able to discuss it intelligently (which is evidently something one should not do, on pain of being labeled a denier), it is religion.
As Eric Hoffer noted, every religion does not have a god, but every one has a devil.
“When what you feel about a subject is as important as being able to discuss it intelligently (which is evidently something one should not do, on pain of being labeled a denier), it is religion.”
It seems to me that would be a cult (which is not to say that what is generally called a religion, cannot be a cult.)
And it seems to me that “religion” has effectively become a devil to many for whom Science (in the institutional/establishment and therefore “consensus” sense) has effectively become a religion (or perhaps even a cult).
For example, the “establishment” off Science has made verboten (as in worthy of being labelled a “denier”) the use of any hypothesis that involves a Designer/Creator. And this despite Science itself (in the modern sense of word) havening been initiated and developed by Christian intellectuals, who clearly based their approach on the hypothesis that there is a Designer/Creator. (and who went on to pretty much dominate the practice right on into fairly times, with about two thirds of all Nobel prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine having been awarding to scientists who self identified as Christian, for instance.)
I can’t help but wonder if Science has not become effectively a sort of cult, and that this “explains” why something like “climate science” can behave as it does (as well as many forms of “social science”) with little or no “pushback” from Science in the institutional/establishment sense, and indeed quite a bit of endorsement . . (And wonder why many who frequent this cite don’t highly suspect that Science has become corrupted in some essential sense.)
Other than some “word salad” type stuff, why not allow those scientists who do hypothesize a Designer/Creator to publish their work in scientific journals? What are the “a-theistic” hypothesizers so afraid of that they would resort to ostracizing any who don’t bow to the great god of bit by bit? ; )
(Freaking lightweights if you ask me . . scared of their devil ; )
Em-pathetic.
All’s fair in lust and abortion, I guess.
“associate professor of social sciences and humanities“
I stopped reading.
Why not just call it what it is? Indoctrination.
I think he must be related to Pajama Boy. Another indicator of his worthlessness, his C.V. is 19 pages long!
Quantity not quality. No sign of any physical sciences background whatsoever so zero critical thinking about climate change and the transition off fossil fuels. No wonder he preaches it is all about the emotion.
Caroline: “[…] his C.V. is 19 pages long!”
You have got to be kidding me!
What… can’t hold a job? Shakespeare wrote his CV?
–
–
I’m willing to bet no one has ever read all 19 pages of his CV.
I can’t resist, here’s another photo of this twit.
I feel that this guy is a total loser. That’s my feelings…
How about being pissed off at CAGW idiots? Does that get me an A in Prof. hyphenated names class?
Duh,m of course they do, because they cannot use science and facts, it must be emotional and nonsensical. That way common core educated people will understand it!
So, not a real scientist then. He’s just a bed-wetter.
The concerning thing is that he’s in front of impressionable young people, handing out over-emotional and mis-informed propaganda. He’s not an educator, he’s an indoctrinator.
He’s just another social reject who has spent too long in academia that he actually believes he has an education. Look at his choice of “disciplines” … not one requiring any discipline. They’re all almost completely subjective only requiring strong emotional involvement.
The commune moved back to campus in paid positions with benefits and travel budgets.
I had a cousin who did just that. He was very against the establishment, then all of a sudden he worked for the state and couldn’t be bothered by any product that wasn’t the best.
Go right ahead mate – you teach ’em.
B4 I go on & on & on (as I’m want to do), there is a teeny weeny problem with what I’m gonna say here and am gonna put it out first.
If, and its quite a big one, we need students who are not coming into the classroom half asleep and zombified.
If they are properly awake. their ‘first impression’ gene will be firing on all four and they will recognise what a complete fraud you are.
Young People Are Not Stupid, do not project yourself onto them, you are wasting your time in your intent.
Not their time though. You will be teaching them plenty, just not what you thought you were teaching
The Problem is getting fully awake pupils
If they had, for breakfast, sugar based shyte such as cornflakes, Coco-Pops, toast & marmalade or in fact anything other than items off a Full English or proper Continental, then they will be half asleep.
Or as teachers from my old patch in Cumbria discovered a few years ago, the wee poppets were full asleep = right back in the Land of Nod by 09:30. Crashed out slumped over their desks.
Their response, the insanity, was amazing. They imagined that The Parents were so poor that the kids hadn’t been fed of a morning, that they were starving hungry thus causing them to fall asleep.
And proceeded to hand out – you guessed – cornflakes and toast.
No. The kids were having early morning Power Naps – brought on by having bellies full of sugar given them by their parents barely 2 hours previous.
(See now why sooooo many people have diabetes? We are so doomed if this madness persists)
Just like this guy, you really do wonder how folks can get such basic things so very very wrong
My daughter is in her first year at a very large, fairly highly ranked public university. She is required to take a Sociology 101 class as one of her humanities requirements. I’ve had to help her to read through the gibberish that passes for scholarly works in Sociology, and her opinion is that Sociology, as so far presented, is not really a valid field in any scientific sense. I cannot argue with her.
The surprising thing is – the vast majority of her classmates think similarly. “Learn to spew BS for the test, get through the class, and move on to real learning” seems to be the mantra of the bulk of the students. (I say bulk even though my daughter has not yet met a single student who is taking the class seriously. But statistically, there MUST be at least one……)
I have hope for the future.
How
Bonkers
With feeling
I tend to have an emotional response when I know that I am being told un-truths. What will the teacher do to the student that calls them out in class for “teaching” a falsehood?
I’ve looked through his CV; if you tried to invent a parody of a green zealot who churns out laughably pointless publications full of green twaddle you’d be hard pushed to improve on this wally.
Yale is off the list for a lot of parents and smart kids unless they are going blindly to admissions on “emotions” and legacy.
A lot of bullshit
After the latest gut-wrenching Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, with the United Nations Climate Change Conference ahead, and with the school year in full swing, a question arises: How should we be teaching young people about climate change.
I ain’t no scinetist, but I did sleep at Holiday Inn once. I have a novel idea: teach the facts.
He’s a twat who teaches nothing but twaddle. This is what they call “education”?
Blah blah blah
– Greta
Yeah, that’s the way we should deal with reality and the real world, emotionally. How could that ever go wrong?
He’s an idiot and working at a preschool level, thinking that the world is all about our emotions. Growing up is learning that many of the things you fantasized about as a child are simply not possible in the real world.
Give him a lollypop and send him home, forever.
He teaches? That’s not teaching, that’s brainwashing while disarming students from thinking responsibly and logically about real world factors that affect their lives.
A Professor who feels that emotional content is a critical part of a discussion about a scientific subject is not teaching science. He is demonstrating his skills in propaganda. Science doesn’t need emotion, it needs evidence. Emotion is the condiment of fact-free belief. Emotional thinking led to “witch” killings, eugenics, the Holocaust, Lysenkoism and the many millions starved to death by the “great leap forward” in China. Professors like this are the ones the socialist dictatorships should have sent out to the farms for reeducation.
Honestly, it sounds like his approach to dealing with the complexities of life is to just act like a two year old.
Once one accepts that indoctrination and education are the same thing, there is no longer a problem.
The word ‘CORRECT’ here says it all. This is nothing less than propaganda served up to a vulnerable captive audience.
This has been an endemic problem in the educational establishments for some years, where students are told WHAT to think and not HOW to think, based on facts presented free of manipulation.
The result is that we now see people who should know better, with letters after their names in the top echelons of society spouting a great deal of emotional nonsense, leading to some ghastly decisions.
But then all the students keep on using fossil fuels every day, just as if they had no such teaching! So what good is the teaching if they do not sacrifice luxuries for the cause?
When I saw “Yale-NUS” I was under the impression that it was part of a well known university located in New Haven. It’s actually in Singapore.
The article sounds more like indoctrination than education.
Of course, it may not be much different in New Haven these days.
Wow.
Yale-NUS associate professor of social sciences and humanities.
Time to bring out the big guns, is it?
Next we’ll be confronted by someone who can fart and chew gum, simultaneously!
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters:
http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/the-sleep-of-reason-produces-monsters-goya.jpg
Goya: ‘without reason, evil and corruption prevail’.
So, not at all pleased that some of his students have climate anxiety, his purpose is to ensure that all of them have the same phobias.
The man should be locked up on abuse charges.
“… As a community, we aim to provide every member with a transformative experience by encouraging habits of the mind (such as creativity, curiosity and critical thinking) and character (integrity, professionalism and ethic of service). Central to the transformation process is our engagement with diverse modes of enquiry and a commitment to challenge our assumptions. …”
Oh f*** off.
OK. So he wants to teach “Political-Climate-Science” rather than real, actual science about the climate. What else is new?
(Or maybe he’s looking for a job with “The Storm Channel”.)
Yale-NUTS Professor ….;)
The best advice I can give Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Yale-NUS associate professor, has already been stated simply and eloquently:
“Never go full retard, man!”
An expert in anti-social sciences and inhumanities, that’s what is deeply troubling.
Hey, Prof, that’s called indoctrination.
Emotional black mailer! Logic, not so much!
And what will these students do after they graduate, and no longer have their professor(s) nearby to hold their hands and tell them what to do, if they haven’t learned to think for themselves? This assistant professor clearly isn’t the brightest bulb on the tree!
You’d think they could at least present a framework with key components like: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of Climate Change.
Members of the church of Climate Scientism definitely have a certain look about them don’t they?
“associate professor of social sciences and humanities” Well that pretty much says it all.
Yale-NUS College is a liberal arts college in Singapore. Established in 2011 as a collaboration between Yale University and the National University of Singapore
So how does he deal with mass hysteria?
If I had that guys face back at me in the mirror each morning I’d also have mommy problems. Never truly gave up the bottle. Years of Strict Freudian Therapy is the only hope.
First it was teaching what to think, now he wants to teach how to feel. Instead of teaching facts and critical thinking, he wants everybody to be weepy helpless gits.
Made me think of the crusty old professor who taught us intro Thermodynamics back in my uni days.
“If there are not a few people in this lecture smarter than me then we are in trouble.”
Ole Matty starts his lectures with
“If there are anyone in this lecture who is more emotional than me then YOU are in trouble!”
so hes got pre screwed up kids and then does his best to mind fVk those that were ok till he got them?
nice fella
he sure raised MY emotional levels..to ANGER
Your daughter will do just fine in my class and at extracurricular events.
Yale evidently wants students to think for themselves but not outside the box they provide.
He is teach them critical thinking that is not expressed in the article.
Some Universities require professors to work outside the educational system periodically to keep them based in the work world.
So now we’re not only teaching students what to think, we’re also telling them what to feel.
In other words, anything he says is best ignored.
Snake oil sales have never been better. Let’s teach our (supposedly) elite youngsters how to open their own franchises.
Yeah, emotion that’s the ticket. Turn those Yalies into blubbering masses of hysteria. That’ll solve our problems. /sarc
Feelings versus facts. Got it!
It is pricks like this that is wrong with the world today.
Sorry, but this has to be the Bee or the Onion. Nice try, though!