The debate over whether climate change belongs in New Zealand’s school curriculum risks missing a much bigger question — how do we prepare today’s tamariki and rangatahi for a world that will increasingly be shaped by a changing climate?
University of Auckland education expert Professor John Morgan says simply putting the words climate change into a curriculum is not enough. The challenge is deciding what young people need to know, how they should respond, and how schools can prepare them without leaving a generation overwhelmed by fear about the future.
The debate has intensified after climate change was omitted as a specific topic from the proposed Social Sciences curriculum for Years 1 to 10, although Education Minister Erica Stanford has indicated it will be restored.
For Morgan, the controversy opens a much deeper conversation about the purpose of education in a climate-altered world.
MORE THAN LEARNING THE SCIENCE
Climate literacy starts with understanding the science — how the climate system works, what is driving warming, how credible information can be assessed and what the consequences could be.
But Morgan argues knowledge alone does not necessarily change behaviour.
Young people will also have to grapple with decisions about mitigation, adaptation and potentially new technologies aimed at reversing or limiting climate change.
That could mean understanding how communities reduce emissions, how towns and cities adapt to rising seas and extreme heat, how economies transition towards lower-carbon industries, and what new skills and occupations will be needed along the way.
For Aotearoa, those questions are already moving beyond the classroom.
Floods, coastal erosion, extreme rainfall, drought and changing weather patterns are increasingly part of conversations about where people live, how infrastructure is built, how food is produced and how communities prepare for emergencies.
Morgan has previously argued that severe weather events themselves provide opportunities for students to explore climate, geography, housing, urban development and the decisions societies make about risk.
WHAT DOES CLIMATE CHANGE MEAN FOR MĀORI?
For Māori, climate education also has the potential to connect scientific knowledge with mātauranga Māori, kaitiakitanga and the relationship between tangata and whenua.
Climate change is not simply an abstract global problem when marae, urupā, papakāinga and coastal whenua may be exposed to flooding, erosion and sea-level rise.
Nor is the transition to a lower-carbon economy purely environmental.
It will affect forestry, farming, fisheries, energy, transport, employment and regional development — sectors where Māori workers, landowners, iwi organisations and businesses have significant interests.
University of Auckland sustainability education work has similarly highlighted a te ao Māori understanding in which people are part of the environment rather than separate from or above it.
That makes climate literacy potentially as much about whakapapa, responsibility and kaitiakitanga as carbon calculations.
THE DANGER OF CLIMATE ANXIETY
There is another challenge facing teachers — how much reality can young people absorb without becoming overwhelmed?
Morgan says discussions with student teachers repeatedly encounter the tension between realism and hope.
Climate anxiety among children and young people has become an important consideration for educators, particularly when climate discussion becomes dominated by catastrophe, tipping points and predictions of an increasingly unstable future.
Ignoring those realities is not the answer.
But neither is teaching children that the future is already lost.
The educational challenge is to give rangatahi the ability to understand the seriousness of climate change while also providing the knowledge, skills and sense of agency needed to respond.
That could include everything from understanding scientific evidence and identifying misinformation to planning resilient communities, developing green technologies, participating in democratic decision-making and pursuing careers emerging from the transition economy.
WHAT KIND OF FUTURE ARE WE EDUCATING FOR?
Morgan says curriculum debates ultimately reveal something much bigger about what society believes education is for.
A curriculum is not simply a collection of subjects. It reflects what one generation believes the next generation needs to understand about the world it will inherit.
Morgan has previously argued that New Zealand’s wider curriculum debate has failed to adequately confront the implications of global warming and the need for more sustainable ways of living.
That makes the argument over climate change about much more than whether it receives a line in an official curriculum document.
The question is whether the education system is preparing young New Zealanders for the country they are actually going to inherit.
For today’s tamariki and rangatahi, that future will include difficult choices around energy, food, transport, housing, whenua, technology and economic development.
Teaching them that climate change exists is the easy part. Preparing them to understand it, adapt to it and help shape what comes next is the real test.
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