National Curriculum risk: a generation of chronically anxious children
Australia could be shaping a generation of deeply anxious young people if schools continue to present climate messaging as urgent, sensational, and nonstop. A prominent psychologist is urging the introduction of age-based guardrails on how climate change is taught to children, arguing that repeatedly telling primary school students that the planet is in peril can cause real harm.
Education and development psychologist Clare Rowe spoke out after a new study highlighted how Australia’s National Curriculum increasingly fuels climate anxiety among youth. The Institute of Public Affairs released a report pointing to a curriculum that leans toward alarmism, with the cross-cutting theme of “Sustainability” weaving climate content into many subjects.
The report finds that this approach channels climate messaging through third‑party groups such as Cool.org, the World Wildlife Fund, and ABC’s Behind the News, providing classroom-ready materials to students as young as five. Critics say these resources often present emotionally charged perspectives without sufficient context for young minds to process them.
Illustrative examples cited include a Behind the News video shown in classrooms that warns of “global boiling” and features imagery of wildfires, scorched landscapes, and melting ice caps, followed by a call to act quickly to avoid a disastrous temperature rise. Other materials include WWF lesson plans that prompt students to pledge energy-saving actions, and a one‑staged activity for first-graders showing a hand with a globe and asking them to craft an Earth Day pledge about sustainable living on each finger.
Rowe, an adjunct fellow at the IPA, expressed deep concern about how early and how often young children are exposed to climate alarmism in primary education. She noted that five-, six-, and seven-year-olds are being told the planet is dying, that animals are disappearing due to human actions, and that their own behavior contributes to a global catastrophe—claims she views as developmentally inappropriate and potentially harmful.
She explained that young children lack the cognitive ability to grasp global, abstract threats like climate change, instead thinking in concrete, literal terms. Repeated messages that the Earth might not sustain life or that certain species are vanishing because of human actions can be internalized in a personal way by children.
Clinically, Rowe reports observing more students presenting with climate-related anxiety, including guilt, fear, sleep disturbances, and feelings of helplessness, symptoms consistent with anxiety disorders. She also pointed out that climate messaging now spans the entire curriculum—from art and humanities to English and early literacy—creating a persistent sense of vigilance and fear.
Rowe warned that we would not expose children to graphic violence or adult medical information in the same way, yet climate messaging is threaded through their whole school experience. She argues that, just as there are safeguards for screen time, online safety, playground gear, and explicit content, there should be guardrails for climate education as well.
She compared timely, age-appropriate education to other sensitive topics, noting that delayed exposure to warfare, terrorism, cancer, or adult political issues serves a protective purpose because children cannot emotionally regulate extreme threats they cannot understand or control. In her view, climate education should follow the same principle.
The IPA’s recommendations include delaying climate change instruction until secondary school, restricting it to science classes at appropriate grade levels, establishing national guidelines for age-appropriate environmental education, and removing climate content from the Sustainability cross-curriculum priority.
If the current trajectory continues, Rowe argues, Australia risks producing a generation that is environmentally aware but chronically anxious. She emphasized that the education system has a duty of care to prevent avoidable psychological harm, asserting that this duty is not being fulfilled under the status quo.
But here’s where it gets controversial: should climate education be paused or scaled back to protect mental health, even if it means potentially slowing the spread of urgent environmental awareness? And this is the part most people miss: can we teach future-oriented, pro-environment behavior effectively without instilling fear? Share your thoughts in the comments: is guardrails–not gut checks–the right path, or should schools push harder to frame climate issues with balance and context?
