Polar Fun and Games

Fewer than one in four Americans (23%) are currently in a formal educational setting—a school, college, or university (U.S. Census 2018). Many of the 77% who are not in school, have a distorted view of the Polar Regions—literally distorted as the typical Mercator projection stretches Antarctica into an enormous white band in the south, and Greenland looks larger than Africa in the north. As recently as 2008, climate change was not typically part of K-12 curriculum (Kastens and Turrin 2008). The greatest strides have been accomplished with the 2013 introduction of the Next Generation Science Standards and the inclusion of climate change in their Disciplinary Core Ideas for instruction (NGSS 2013), but this occurred well after most Americans graduated and NGSS has not been fully adopted by all 50 states. Taken together, these factors call for creative methods for delivering both polar and climate education to the broader public.