Lawmakers have a new target in NC schools: earth science

Editor's Note: This column was written by Sara Pequeño, a Raleigh-based opinion writer for McClatchy’s North Carolina Opinion Team and member of the Editorial Board. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2019, and has been writing in North Carolina ever since.

North Carolina is rooted in agriculture and the abundance of wildlife that has made it a beautiful place to live. We have dense mountain forests, destination beaches and more than a dozen state parks.

To preserve all of this, we need everyone to understand the way our ecosystems work and the role we all play in shaping them. That’s what is so surprising about a new bill that would forgo earth science education in favor of including a computer science course as a graduation requirement.

Computer science absolutely should be offered at North Carolina public schools. A basic level of computer knowledge is necessary in a lot of different careers, not just information technology. Even journalists can benefit from some basic HTML training.

The bill’s premise, however, is that one science must be sacrificed at the expense of another — and the chosen sacrifice just so happens to be the class where most students will learn about climate change and how their actions impact the environment. It’s akin to other attacks on public school education — like the panic over Critical Race Theory — that we’ve seen the last few years.

The bill was filed by Wake County Republican Erin Paré and is co-sponsored by two of the three chairs of the House Education Committee. All but one of the other sponsors are Republicans (Shelley Willingham, a co-sponsor of the controversial “anti-rioting bill,” is the lone Democrat). The bill has also received some support from State Superintendent Catherine Truitt, who told the committee that “of all the things that keep me up at night, eliminating earth science isn’t necessarily one of them.”

Truitt may not be losing sleep over earth science curriculum, but the impact of climate change is a source of anxiety for many teenagers and young adults. In a 2021 study of 10,000 16-25 year olds, more than 60% said they were “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change. Fifty-six percent said they agreed with the sentiment that humanity was doomed.

An earth science course may not quell these fears, but it does allow students to understand some of the natural disasters they may have experienced living in North Carolina, and it can help them feel connected to a larger system that all living things depend on.

“Globally, we are facing the largest environmental challenges ever, probably in the history of humankind,” Dr. Gail Jones, a professor of science education at North Carolina State University, told me. “To eliminate the one environmental earth course in our curriculum that can help educate, and help the next generation understand what’s going on with climate change, seems to be a confusing proposal.”

Jones has spent decades researching science education and curriculum. She says that although this is the first time a bill like this has been considered, schools often sacrifice science education to focus on subjects that appear on standardized tests, like math and English. Jones suggested a compromise could be made by integrating computer science into all subjects. This would make sense: the bill’s purpose, after all, is to prepare students for the computer skills that you’ll also need for “jobs in hospitals, in banking, in manufacturing,” according to Truitt.

The entire premise of substituting one science class for another is absurd. North Carolina only requires three science courses for high school students to graduate. There are limits to what the state can require of all schools, but there are better ways to establish a computer science curriculum. As Rep. Julie von Haefen suggested in a committee meeting, computer science could be added to the Career and Technical Education (CTE) curriculum, since its focus is career development.

A less generous reading of the bill is that environmental science is on the chopping block because Republican lawmakers don’t think students need to learn about climate change. They’ve already rallied against comprehensive sex education and accurate history teaching, after all. As with the other contentious subjects, understanding climate change and the way humanity fits into our ecosystems will lead to a public that understands the need to change the status quo, to course-correct the mistakes of previous generations.

Computer science is important. Earth science is also important. We shouldn’t forgo one to make room for the other.