Leading educational and developmental psychologist Clare Rowe reveals how schools are causing climate anxiety in kids as young as five

Sky News AU

04-06-2025

A leading psychologist has revealed how schools have become a major driver of rising rates of anxiety in kids, telling Sky News Australia kids as young as five are being left terrified.
A new report by educational and developmental psychologist Clare Rowe claims alarmist content in Australia's National Curriculum is causing an 'epidemic of climate anxiety', with primary-school-aged kids being bombarded with 'emotive' messages about climate change that are not developmentally appropriate.
Ms Rowe said mental health experts like her were seeing increasing numbers of children 'gripped by fear' about climate change.
'I have had seven, eight, and nine-year-olds in tears in my office because they do not think they're going to make it to adulthood. They think the older generations have failed them, the government's not listening, and no one cares about them,' she said.
The leading psychologist told Sky News host Chris Kenny that while much of the research that exists assumed this was because they are exposed to more extreme weather events, her analysis showed it was due to the lessons about climate change that saturate the curriculum.
'We went and looked at the curriculum in detail. And the fact is, sustainability - aka climate - is what they call a cross-curriculum priority. It's got to be embedded in every single subject from five years old,' Ms Rowe said.
'So in music, they're writing rap songs about climate. In English, they're writing poetry about climate change. It's mandated, so teachers have to teach it across the curriculum.
The developmental psychologist said much of the content was very 'emotive', with messages such as 'there is no planet B' and 'the earth is sick'.
'It is no wonder we're spending billions of dollars on mental health that these kids - we're not actually educating them, we're just terrifying them,' she said.
Ms Rowe's report argues that it is 'developmentally inappropriate' for primary school-aged kids to be learning about complex issues like climate change. And the leading psychologist said this was resulting in kids coming home and telling their parents they needed to eat less meat and drive their cars less, or else there would be dire consequences.
'The kids I see do believe… that we're in an extinction. And that's just abusive,' she said.
Ms Rowe said she was not a scientist and did not take a position on climate change, but that even if the goal was to drive climate change action, the current approach was counterproductive.
'Even if you subscribe to the fact that we're all doomed… we're not actually equipping the next generation to become the brilliant scientists who are going to come up with the adaptations, who are going to solve the problem. Because they're just paralysed,' she said.
Ms Rowe argues that in order to reduce the growing prevalence of eco-anxiety, climate change education needs to be delayed until secondary school. But that ideally, the National Curriculum should be rebalanced and sustainability removed as a cross curriculum priority.