Paper short abstract:

Teachers in the rural, often agrarian, United States are experiencing a "moral panic" (Ullman, 2022) about how to teach their middle school and high school students about environmental issues, like global warming and the fracking industry.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I discuss an anthropological review of existing literature on the anxiety teachers feel around teaching about environmental issues in the United States. This paper will focus on rural America and use the lens of "moral panic" as defined by Ullman (2022). Specifically, this paper will examine how middle school and high school teachers in the rural areas of the United States are educating their students about issues like: fracking, global warming, fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses. In many areas of rural America, curricula on environmental change are funded by companies that are major producers of environmental pollution; like those run by so-called "Big Coal." I am from a rural part of California and the apathy towards environmental issues like global warming is shocking. I want to use an anthropological approach to synthesize existing research in a way that tells a coherent story about how teachers in rural areas are facing moral dilemmas and "moral panic" about how to teach about environmental issues and environmental change. Often, rural communities are the ones most reliant on "heavy polluter" industries. These rural communities are some of the geographic sites most impacted by environmental change. Using an anthropological approach, I will tell a story about what is happening in the rural parts of the United States to highlight research gaps.

References:

Ullman, J. (2022). Trans/Gender-Diverse Students’ Perceptions of Positive School Climate and Teacher Concern as Factors in School Belonging: Results From an Australian National Study.

Teachers College Record, 124(8), 145-167.