In the article "Americans Are Missing a Key Stratum of Modern Knowledge" for The Atlantic on May 5, UNL's Dr. Beth Lewis was interviewed by Kendra Pierre-Louis about the connection between climate change and earth science education.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/05/earth-science-education-climate-change/629761/
Here is an excerpt:
“Back in the 1950s, Earth science was viewed as for gifted students,” Beth Lewis, an associate professor of science education at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, told me. “It was this new, shiny science.” The emergence of plate-tectonic theory, the discovery of the ocean’s Mid-Atlantic ridges and of ocean-floor spreading, and the feeling that, after so long, there was a unifying theory of geology all added up to a massive shift in thinking—the kind of exciting scientific discovery that students of all levels should learn about. “But unfortunately, it just kind of plateaued.”
There are several theories as to why the field lost its prominence, but Lewis thinks that part of the problem is that arguably the biggest science award in the world doesn’t recognize it. There’s no Nobel prize for Earth science.