Four-year-old Frances Gaskin, who lives with her family in Houston, has a favorite. His favorite new Netflix animated episode: When the canopy of the Amazon rainforest dries out from being too hot, a manic howler monkey has to move to the lower areas of the forest, wreaking havoc among other rainforest dwellers. cause “They had to find new homes,” Francis explained in a video interview.
“I noticed something else,” added the preschooler. “The frog was trying to lay eggs in the water, but there was no water in the stream because it hadn’t rained.”
“Sometimes the earth warms,” he said.
Francis’ favorite show is “Octonauts: Above and Beyond.” It’s a recent spin-off of the BBC’s long-running programme, and one of the first television programs aimed at very young children to explicitly address climate change. This program tries to strike a delicate balance. So gently showing the 3-year-old and her 4-year-old that the world is already changing without fear of the consequences.
Climate scientists say the depiction is largely accurate, but with one notable omission. The program says nothing about why the earth is heating up – the burning of oil, gas and coal.
Instead, “Octonauts” focuses heavily on adventurous heroes. Two pirate cats travel the world to rescue animals from islands that are being swallowed up by rising sea levels. A monkey hydrologist delivers water to a herd of elephants along the coast of Namibia as drinking water dries up due to a worsening drought.
She observes that the thawing permafrost in Siberia is hampering the work of dog scientists. “Temperatures are rising all over the world. It may not be cold enough for the ground to remain frozen,” she said, declining to explain the implications for greenhouse gases from fossil fuels.
In some ways, the series is part of a long tradition of children’s programming that uses animal characters to teach them about the natural world.
Still, “Octonauts” traverses uncharted territory.
“I don’t know of any other programs about climate change for this age group.” common sense mediareviews over 900 TV shows for kids.
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Preschool TV shows like “Let’s Go, Luna,” “Dora the Explorer,” and “Doc McStuffins” have one episode about global warming. But few programs address the impacts of climate change over multiple episodes. PBS, which has been the center of educational television for children for decades, has few preschool programs about climate change.
Sara DeWitt, senior vice president and general manager of PBS Kids, said: Historically, PBS has created educational programming for children around existing school curricula, according to DeWitt. But there is no consensus on how best to teach the youngest children about how more powerful storms, wildfires, rising sea levels, extreme heat and drought will shape their lives.
Gary Evans, an environmental and developmental psychologist at Cornell University who surveys children in kindergarten through third grade to find out what they know and how they know about climate change, said: He said: It makes them feel. “People who say they know the best way to talk to young children about climate change are doing so without the guidance of data.”
Climate scientists say that needs to change. Sometimes called “Generation Alpha,” children born in the last decade will spend their first lives on a planet irrevocably changed by human-induced global warming.
And children carry a special burden of climate change. Research commissioned in 2014 A UNICEF study found that children account for 80% of the deaths attributed to climate change in developing countries.
“More and more children are going through this crisis on their own,” says Harriet Shugarman, director of ClimateMama, an organization aimed at helping parents communicate with their children about climate change. noted that scientists recently experienced devastating floods in Pakistan. They say climate change has made it worse. About 1,500 people have died so far, nearly half of them children, and more than 33 million people have been forced from their homes by floods caused by heavier-than-usual monsoon rains and melting glaciers.
Even children in the world’s richest countries are feeling the effects, Sugarman said. “If you lived in Oregon or California and couldn’t go to school because of the wildfires, we can’t protect our children from these realities,” she said.
“Our children will grow up and survive this transformational period in human history,” Sugarman said. “And parents still don’t have enough data or education to have these conversations with their children, especially the little ones. Parents need help.”
Sugarman and others said it was time for Octonauts: Above and Beyond.
Originally broadcast on the BBC in 2010, the ‘Octonauts’ series features eight supernatural and adorable ocean characters, including Captain Barnacles the brawny polar bear, Kwazii the adventurous pirate cat and Peso the gentle medic penguin. Featuring a crew of adventurers. Together they travel the oceans in an octopus-shaped submarine to find and rescue sea creatures in danger. It’s intended to evoke the encounter between Jacques Cousteau and Star Trek, but it’s very cutely executed, says Kurt, the show’s executive producer. Muller.
From the beginning, Muller and his team Moss Landing Marine Laboratories San Jose State University, California, to ensure scientific accuracy in each episode (except for the submarine-drinking animals story).
In 2019, Mueller approached Neflix about expanding the show. With ‘Octonauts: Above and Beyond,’ which releases its first season in September 2021, the cast of characters doubles as her and takes her to land to save animals and plants. According to Muller, the initial idea was simply to expand the world in which Octonauts finds adventure.
But as the team develops new stories, another executive producer, Lacey Stanton, said:
“We collect a lot of story ideas straight from the news and are scrutinized by science,” Stanton said.
For the new series, Muller and Stanton consulted Susannah Sandlin, an environmental science professor at the University of Arizona, and Natasha Crandall, an educational media consultant, to ensure the episodes were scientifically sound and emotionally appropriate. confirmed. Preschooler.
“We are intentional,” said Ms. Stanton. “We are looking at how much is too much, how much is too complicated. ends by resolving
The program also shows preschoolers how climate change will affect their lives. In one episode, the Octonauts experience a shortage of their essential drink, hot cocoa, as the heat kills the cocoa trees. The team sings, “When the climate changes, the temperatures get hotter, and the trees get thirsty and dry in the heat.”
Netflix has released shows in 19 languages and 190 countries. The company declined to provide figures, but executives said its viewership ranks among the top 10 children’s shows in 44 countries, including the US, UK, Australia, France, Spain, South Korea, Colombia and the United Arab Emirates. said to be one of
Frances’ mother, Stephanie Gaskin, said she was grateful to the show for introducing her to difficult subjects she might not have discussed with her son without it.
Her family lives in an area of Texas that has already experienced the effects of climate change. Of the 2017 hurricanes, 2015 floods and 2021 winter storms, “Harvey, Memorial Day floods and massive freezes will make us see the region like nothing it has seen before.” I came.
Gaskin, a former first-grade teacher who hopes to return to the classroom when her children are older, said the series gave her ideas on how to discuss climate change with young students.
“Children are much smarter than we think,” she said. “I know kids would understand it if I brought this up in the classroom like this.”
She also said she thought the program avoided frightening her son. When asked about the living creature, Francis said, “It makes me sad.”
But he then gleefully explained how the Octonauts swooped in to save the day, as they do at the end of every episode. They have airdropped water into dry rainforests, shaded dead cacao trees, and moved animals endangered by rising sea levels to higher ground.
“A lot of science is right on target,” he said. Woodwell Climate Research Center, refers to an episode in which a red fox wandered into the territory of an arctic fox. “We are already seeing that change: new interactions between species, animals and plants that historically have not interacted.”
But when asked to watch an episode of the show, Ms. Goldstone and several climate scientists wondered what they called a “first aid” solution and that the show didn’t want human activity to cause a crisis. They were critical of the fact that they never mentioned that they were.
“These episodes don’t provide the broader context of why the Amazon is droughting and glaciers are melting,” Goldstone said. “We are missing an opportunity to teach the true basis of climate change: the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, and that humanity can stop global warming.”
Heather Tillert, head of preschool programming at Netflix, said she thinks this is overkill for preschoolers. “Kids need to know what to expect from the structure of the episode,” she said. It puts you in a terrifying situation to let something take over.”
Still, Goldstone called the program a brave first attempt to meet new challenges. “The only way we can get better is to try and experiment,” she said. I need to speak better with
“I salute everyone who is making an effort,” she said.