There is now a wide appreciation of the damage being done to the environment through human activity. This damage is sometimes global, as in the case of the depletion of the ozone layer and of the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Often the damage is regional, as with pest degradation of native forests, or the erosion of river catchments. Often too, the damage is local. Pollution from motor vehicles, contamination of soil by chemicals, sewage discharges; these and hundreds of other human activities stress the environment.
Environmental Education is a new focus for education. It is a way of helping individuals and societies to resolve fundamental issues relating to the current and future use of the world's resources. However, simply raising awareness of these issues is insufficient to bring about change. Environmental Education must strongly promote the need for personal initiatives and social participation to achieve sustainability.
Environmental Education is a process of recognising values and clarifying concepts in order to develop skills and added tools necessary to understand and appreciate the inter-relationship among man, his culture and his bio-physical surrounding. It creates an overall perspective, which acknowledges the fact that natural environment and man-made environment are interdependent. It should consider the environment in its totality and should be a continuous lifelong process beginning at the pre-school level and continuing through all stages. It should be inter-disciplinary and examine major environmental issues from local, national and international points of view. It should utilise various educational approaches to teach and learn about and from the environment with stress on practical activities and first-hand experience. It is through this process of education that people can be sensitized about the environmental issues.
The passage of the Federal Environmental Quality Education Act of 1970 is considered the impetus for environmental education in the United States. "Its purpose was to protect the environment and/or enhance environmental quality...Education was seen as a tool to accomplish a societal mission, not as an end in itself." However, failure to provide adequate funding prevented environmental education from becoming widely adopted. Whatever small federal support remained throughout the 1970s virtually disappeared in the 1980s. "State education agencies generally followed the federal lead by substantially de-emphasizing environmental education...."
The 1990s are being ushered in with the National Environmental Education Act (NEEA), which calls for the Federal EPA to work with "local educational institutions, state education agencies, not-for-profit educational and environmental organizations, and private sector interests." It should be noted that the 1990 legislation is similar to the 1970 Act, which ultimately amounted to very little in terms of lasting reform.
There are two fundamental approaches: One approach sees environmental degradation as requiring students to learn more about basic principles of ecology-the relationships between and among all living things-the various earth processes and cycles which create our earth environment, and the scientifically stated causes of and possible technological remedies for our damaged environment. This approach could, and to some small degree already has fit neatly into public educational systems simply by having teachers at varying grade levels incorporate such material into their present science and social studies content areas. Be it through such curricular infusion or by treating environmental education as a separate subject, this approach operates under what can be termed the existing Western, scientific, rationalist paradigm. Students are taught how to improve upon presently harmful ways of doing things through recycling and conservation without explicitly being confronted with the systemic nature of environmental abuse and the degree to which it may be embedded in our economic, political, social, and religious character.
A second approach sees environmental degradation as requiring a much more radical educational response. Rather than supposing that our society simply needs to provide more information about ecology and cleaner technologies, and assuming everything else about our societal underpinnings to be relatively benign, this approach calls into question the very nature of our modern, technological society. From this perspective, modern technological society's economic structure is seen as based primarily upon the ever-expanding exploitation of limited earth resources and the inevitable creation and dissemination of harmful byproducts. This critical perspective on Western, scientific rationalism sees as the root cause of environmental problems Western humanity's misshapen and alienating belief that humans are separate from the natural world and thus free to exploit it as they see fit without consequences for the spiritual essence of nature. In order to counteract this sense of separateness and re-unify humankind with the natural world, the educational function here becomes nothing less than the radical re-directing of the perceptual, spiritual, ethical, and cognitive world of its citizenry. This task would be equivalent to a cultural revolution and would require radical changes in present economic frameworks at the very least.
Exemplary environmental programs
The following existing programs could be helpful in providing insights for future environmental education:
Institute for Earth Education, an international, non-profit, educational organization which provides training in how to implement focused, comprehensive earth education programs at even the lowest grade levels. The emphasis is on making education an enthusiastic adventureцa discovery of the wonder and mystery of the natural world while at the same time providing the structured learning objectives which characterize sound educational programs. Most importantly, students learn the connection between their way of life and the state of environmental degradation. Forging a sustainable lifestyle becomes part of the educational agenda.
This type of program could and should be taught in University Schools of Education. Regardless of where one ultimately stands on the questions of technology and science, at the elementary school level it would certainly be difficult to quibble with this program's emphasis on perception, feelings for the natural world, love of oneself, respect for life, and understanding life's processes. Many would agree that such a program could serve as a needed antidote to our increasingly mediated experience of the world.
College of the Atlantic (COA), founded in 1969, provides a broad liberal arts education focused on the theme of human ecology. Its roots are "in the humanistic and scientific traditions of the past; such traditions not only inform the present but shape the future. By examining the multiple ways these traditions interconnect, COA students learn in creative and innovative ways, and most importantly they learn to be more comfortable with uncertainty."
Meadowcreek Project, Inc., "a non-profit environmental organization established for education and research in applied ecology, agriculture, renewable energy systems, forestry, wildlife, as well as the ethical, social, economic, and political aspects of sustainability."