In education the Null Curriculum (or excluded curriculum) are those ideas and topics which are intentionally or unintentionally excluded from teaching. Frequently, this is just fine. Not bringing slavery into your astronomy class focused on quasars is fairly justified. But not bringing slavery into your history class focused on the American Civil War is a different story. Much of our society’s systemic racism comes from a collective lack of including analysis of oppression into many classes. It’s not enough to learn about oppression in your civil rights class. You also need to know about how oppression works in journalism, economics, and even into the sciences when we look at who is, and who is not, studying those subjects.
Null Curriculum is a powerful shaper of what we learn, and what we signal to each other about the relative importance of topics. Leaving a subject out of an article is a choice (or mistake) to make that subject less important and worthy of attention than whatever it is you are focusing on. Intentionally ignoring an important topic entirely is a disservice to the reader who if they are less informed on a subject than the writer, may not have the background to connect the topic of the article to what is left out. If you include something to disagree with it, the reader is at least aware of the disagreement. But to leave a topic out entirely is to risk the reader never making the connection.
Climate is now everything, and everything is climate.
- Agriculture? Big time producer of green house gasses and potential means to sequester them
- Interior? All about our infrastructure and how it supports or doesn’t support climate friendly choices.
- State? Diplomacy without considering the effects of climate on other countries is short sighted.
- Treasury? Mints our metal coins and a key actor in our economy, one influenced by climate.
- Justice? The enforcer of our environmental laws and a critical part of keeping businesses in line.
- Commerce? How we create economic growth and in what areas greatly affects our climate.
- Labor? Both affected by heat waves and storms as well as critical to support justice in climate laws
- Defense? One of the biggest producers of green house gases but also a key fleet of vehicles switching to renewables. It also will be counted on to deal with international strife caused by climate change. It’s also a large source of funding for research.
- Health and Human Services? Climate related deaths are already happening and increasing.
- Housing and Urban Development? How, what, and where we build are critical components of climate friendly policy.
- Transportation? A key producer of green house gases and therefor an area we can effect a lot of change.
- Energy? Domestic energy production and conservation.
- Education? A driver of knowledge and attitudes regarding science and climate.
- Veterans Affairs? It includes “Non-healthcare benefits include disability compensation, vocational rehabilitation, education assistance, home loans, and life insurance.” Both vocational rehabilitation and home loans have climate related policy. Not to mention, our veterans from Iraq are already part of the climate wars. There are unfortunately more to come.
- Homeland Security? Includes FEMA which should be obvious, but migration and terrorism are connected to climate as well.
Okay, the class on astronomy focused on quasars probably doesn’t need to include a section on climate. But the space program and satellites are critically important to studying climate change. And breaks away from climate by looking at cat pictures (or whatever you find refreshing) are important for long term health and stamina. But nonstop focus on political buffoons is a distraction the oil companies want us to follow. Every moment spent on the latest stupid Republican quote sucks up just a little bit of oxygen needed for more important things. Fighting fascism is important. Particularly because it’s the fascists driving us towards climate change. Not making the connection is a dangerous omission. So if you’re going to make fun of buffoons, at least remind the reader these buffoons are endangering our planet in the process.
Please don’t interpret me as saying every last thing written needs to be about climate change. That’s absurd and unhelpful. But failure to responsibly bring it up in public on a regular basis is to place yourself with the climate deniers. The null curriculum with regards to climate is about pretending so much of our world is somehow apart or separate from climate. It pretends that most every decision about our government or society is somehow not related.
My own town of Petaluma, CA is currently building a new dock on the river (a tidal estuary) which will be underwater with 10 feet of seal rise. The new houses being built out by the river will lose their road with 5 feet of sea level rise. Why aren’t they addressing climate in these decision? Because not enough people talk about it. A lack of housing creates more homelessness which puts more people at risk due to extreme weather (not to mention being ethically awful all on its own). In order to address enough people need to be vocal about it.
To talk about our next election without examining our candidates positions on different climate issues is pretending the most important decisions in the history of humanity are not worthy of examination. To assume that just because a candidate has a “D” next to their name means they will be good on climate issues is naivety of the most extreme.
Responsibly responding to climate change is not just about hoping the latest democrat we elected will finally do the right thing. It’s also not just doing our own thing in isolation. Changing our own personal lives is incredibly important. But changing our personal lives means talking about it. Bring it up in conversations. Be vocal about work and community changes needed to assist with climate change. Go out and protest. Yes protests work, but not in changing laws. Protest works by communally acknowledging that something is wrong.
Right now too many people are pretending like nothing is wrong even if they know or suspect something is wrong. They look around and see too few other people acting like something is wrong, so they go on with their day thinking its not yet time to pay more attention to it.. Well it’s time to pay attention. It’s time to act. It’s time to make clear to everyone around us that we need to address climate change at every level of our society. From the top laws, to how it affects our employees, our clients, our disadvantaged, our folks on the margins, and ourselves. It’s time to stop pretending. We are social creatures and we take our socials cues on the importance of topics by observing what others attach importance to. Not attaching importance to solving climate change is participating in climate denial.
I don’t care if you leave climate change out of an article you write because you thought about it and couldn’t really fit it in. You tried, and well maybe your essay on Beowulf just doesn’t have a climate angle. That’s okay. You thought about it. But if you write about a politician without considering how their actions and votes affect climate change, what is your excuse? Does the US budget not affect climate change? Does border policy not relate to climate refugees? If you don’t mention it in one article because you sufficiently addressed it previously, that’s fine. We can’t rehash everything every single time.
But if you can easily connect some topic to climate and you never or too rarely address it, you are a climate denier.