Environmental Education

Reading material for Environmental Education Students
--Shamsha Emanuel
Environmental Education

Environmental education is pedagogical framework that seeks to fuse the environment and the natural world into all disciplines in a truly interdisciplinary manner that raises student awareness of all of the multifaceted interdependences in the world. The goal is the integration of environmental issues or components into the teacher’s subject matter, as teaching aides or examples, in a way that increases students’ awareness of the natural world and promotes a better understanding of the environment and its importance without necessarily being the subject of the class.
In this paper I will attempt to analyze environmental education in a way that is meaningful for determining its place in educational curriculum. I will look at the appropriateness of teaching values in school and what constitutes moral education. I will then attempt to define environmental education, drawing largely on the Tbsilis declaration, for the purpose of determining if environmental education can or should endorse a particular value stance. I will then discuss some of the possible problems or criticisms that may arise from including environmental education in the realm of moral education. Lastly, I will defend the necessity of allowing environmental education to go beyond simply presenting the information and to creating little environmentalists.

Values in Education
Education, in general, is faced with the challenge of providing students with all of the information necessary while also teaching them how to gather information and analysis a situation or issue on their own outside of a classroom. This type of education seems to follow the ancient proverb that states, “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.”
There are certain values that have become socially common. These values encompass many of the restrictions that allow people to live within close proximity of each other while minimizing conflicts. David Kerr writes that, “Citizenship or civics education is construed broadly to encompass the preparation of young people for their roles and responsibilities as citizens and, in particular, the role of education (through schooling, teaching and learning) in that preparatory process” (Kerr 6). These social values that are taught in a formal way range from morals like ‘do not steal’ to issues like ‘rock the vote!’ The criterion for considering a value framework appropriate for an educational setting is not always clear.
Without getting into an analysis of moral education, I would like to make a number of assumptions from which to work from. While I am sure that the foundation I am laying is not without it critics, it will allow me to set the stage to talk about the particular case of environmental education in this essay. The first assumption I will ask you to blindly accept is the claim that one of the major purposes of moral education is to develop the character of the student. Another assumption that I will ask you to make with me is the notion that what constitutes a good character is a subjective question, but that many of the components that make up the answer to the question will be shared across many different cultures and groups (i.e. they are culturally agreed upon).
The reason for asking you accept these assumptions is to circumvent spending too much time on defining moral education. The concepts that must be made clear include the ideas that we are educating students to learn in a certain way about a certain things and that this sort of education is reserved to character building morals or values. These values are generally not at the discretion of the teacher, and are know and agreed upon publicly as appropriate for an educational setting. While we would not accept religious education as appropriate for a school, we would accept certain Judeo-Christian values that are also shared by other religious or secular groups of society. The material being presented cannot aim to promote Christianity in the schools but should aim to create responsible citizens that posses moral and values.
Another distinction that has to be made clear relates to teaching in a way that promotes a certain viewpoint over another in a academic or controversial subject area that does not fall under the heading of moral education. Education, in general, should not aim to indoctrinate but to enlighten. This means that when presenting a topic, a teacher should present the information available and allow the student to come to a conclusion. This is obviously not applicable to subject areas that aim to build character by promoting honesty, integrity, social responsibility, and other traits that shape a student into a responsible and productive member of society.

Is Environmental Education a Form of Moral Education?
Environmental education has a history that has eluded an agreed upon definition. An excellent environmental education curriculum, according the Tbilisi Declaration, one of the generally agreed up frameworks, will meet the following goals:
1. to foster clear awareness of, and concern about, economic, social, political, and ecological interdependence in urban and rural areas;
2. to provide every person with opportunities to acquire the knowledge, values, attitudes, commitment, and skills needed to protect and improve the environment;
3. to create new patterns of behavior of individuals, groups, and society as a whole towards the environment. (Tbilisi 15)
These goals seem to illustrate that environmental education is an endeavor to educate in way that fosters a particular attitude towards the natural world.
In the Tbilisi Declaration is a quotation from The Declaration of the United Nations Conference on Human Environment, a precursor the Tbilisi Declaration, that stated, “to defend and improve the environment for present and future generations has become an imperative goal for mankind” (Tbilisi 13). The Declaration goes on to state that a goal of environmental education is to, “create new patterns of behavior…towards the environment” (Tbilisi 15). According to the declaration, one objective of environmental education is to, “help social groups and individuals acquire a set of values and feelings of concern for the environment and the motivation for actively participating in environmental improvements and protection” (Tbilisi 15) and one of the guiding principles is to, “promote the value and necessity of local, national, and international cooperation in the prevention and solution of environmental problems” (Tbilisi 15).
The goals, principles, and objectives of environmental education, as presented by at the Intergovernmental Conference of Environmental Education in 1977, seem to clearly advocate a teaching pedagogy that not only educates students about the environmental woes of the day but also promotes a particular value stance. The experts of environmental education, while unquestionably aware of the dangers and taboos associated with educational indoctrination, decided that the goals, principles, and objectives of environmental education must be calibrated to changing the values and feelings of students to improve and protect the environment.
When analyzing this situation, it seems that one of the goals of environmental education, according the Tbilisi declaration, is create little environmentalist. This seems to fly in the face of convention, in that ignores the notion that the issues should be presented, but that value claims should not be endorsed one way or another. Is this because the stakes are too high and the educators feel that the subject falls under the moral education heading or is this a lapse of judgment that indicates that the declaration should be taken with a grain of salt?
I would like to argue that the purpose of environmental education is not just to make students aware of the natural world and the environmental issues that will later be a part of their life, but it is to encourage a particular sensitivity and attitude towards the issues. The purpose, as pointed out earlier is to create an environmentally-minded constituency for the benefit of society. Viewed in this light, attempting to create little environmentalist, or more accurately ecologically responsible citizens, is a form of moral education in the same way the creating politically responsible citizens is a form of moral education.

Problems of Environmental Education as a form of Moral Education
Unfortunately, the number of people that see the state of the environment as imperative to the health and well-being of mankind is less than would be desired. This may result in conflict when attempting to instill ecologically responsibility in students. Parents may not agree or be receptive to the idea that the school system is attempting to develop a little environmentalist or their child. Perhaps the parent is planning on instilling cut-throat capitalist values in the hope of raising an entrepreneurial child that is indifferent of these or any other issues that might get in the way of financial success. Or perhaps the parent feels that the school has no business teaching that the internal combustion engine is less than magnificent. The point is, not all people support environmentalist, and those people are most likely to support an environmentalist agenda in the schools.
While any viewpoint on most any subject can be taken to the extreme, that doesn’t eliminate that viewpoint from the sphere of the appropriate. While the school has no business encouraging students to embrace certain typea of environmentalist attitudes, such as a deep ecology or an eco-terrorism, the school is not out of line by advocating a more ecologically sustainable lifestyle. Environmental educations must be careful not to overstep its bounds and make claims that affect other related issues subjects such as religion or politics that should not be taught in a bias manner.
Another issues that presents itself as problematic when proposing teaching a particular moral stance on what our relationship with the natural world should be, is the question of which environmental ethic to embrace and propagate? The field of environmental ethics is far from unanimous on this issue and the appropriate environmental framework is questionable. Is the Leopoldian idea of a land ethic, which raises the moral standing of the natural world to a level that is more equal with other spheres of human moral consideration, an appropriate framework? Or is restructuring moral consideration in this way too extreme or radical? Is a more appropriate framework one that simply teaches a stewardship mentality towards that natural world? Perhaps a more widely accepted framework would be one that teaches that we have to conserve natural resources for future use. But is this stance compartmentalizing environmentalism into too small of a utilitarian box?
I would argue that this question of ethics is one of the most difficult questions that must be addresses by environmental education. The goal, as presented in Tbsilis Declaration gives no clear direction on how to answer this question. It argues that values and attitudes should be cultivated, but falls short of claiming to know what those values and attitudes should be. This may be due to the difficult and subjective nature of the debate. Perhaps the international conference was unable to come to an agreement that on what vales to teach that would be appropriate for all 66 of the nations that were present. Perhaps the values for the USSR, the United States, and New Zealand were significantly different that they were best left undeclared.

A Proposed Value Framework for Environmental Education
The solution to this issue seems to be one that is a bit of a compromise and seems to circumvent many of the criticisms that are sure to be raised against an aim that includes creating little environmentalist. While the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an environmentalist as, “one concerned about environmental quality especially of the human environment with respect to the control of pollution,” the term has developed a negative connotation in the eyes of many. Creating an environmentalist, as defined here, is exactly what environmental education wants to accomplish in that it is instilling in students a sense of responsibility or a feeling of concern for environmental quality and pollution issues.
While the environmental ethicist may argue that what is needed is a more fundamental moral shift, simply being concerned about the state of the environment and desiring to improve it is the only way that society can be prepared for such a shift. Baring some cataclysmic environmental occurrence that brings the fragility of the environment and the interdependence of nature and humans to light, a shift in values will not occur easily. However, fostering attitudes of concern for the environment in our students is a way of speeding along the emergence of an environmental ethic.
As opposed to advocating a particular environmental ethic in the classroom, teachers should present the state of the environment and the concerns that we have about it is an open way. Teachers should also educate students about some of different views that are held by environmentalist and their goals and methods. Students should then be encouraged to and supported in developing their on views on how to best protect and conserve the environment. This somewhat objective presentation of the environmental issues and frameworks for dealing with the issues should be coupled with a sense of urgency and importance.
The importance of instilling ecologically responsible attitudes in students is the goal. The goal is not to create a particular type of little environmentalist, but simply to create an ecologically responsible citizen that is an environmentalist in the general sense of the term, as defined by Merriam-Webster.

Conclusion
The role of education, in some sense, has come to replace the role of the family in regards to moral and ethical education. The schools are responsible for shaping the minds of today’s youth into tomorrow’s leaders. Teachers are responsible for providing an unbiased education while at the same time developing the moral framework that is necessary.
Citizenship values and environmental values go hand-in-hand when defining the morals that are foundational to ensuring our future. Without the appropriate social values our society will degenerate. Without the appropriate environmental values the world in which our society depends will degenerate. While these are not the only two categories of moral that are of benefit to us, the social values are easily paralleled with the environmental values.
For schools to choose a particular environmental ethic that should be endorsed, risks indoctrinating a particular values system that may come in conflict with other value systems that a parent may rightfully reject. For example, teaching students to embrace James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis may result in resistance from parents that see it as similar to a form of paganism that conflicts with their personal spiritual beliefs. While teaching about Lovelock’s theory is not problematic, endorsing in a public school would be.
While it may seems that all is lost, and we must hope upon hope that enough students are able to come up with the conclusion that we want, this is not the case. That we should not endorse a particular school of environmentalism does not necessarily mean that we cannot endorse environmentalism in the general sense. Making students aware of the environmental problems that we face and encouraging them in developing caring attitudes towards the environment is different from teaching them to embrace paganism. In fact, developing ecologically conscious and sensitive members of society is exactly what environmental education strives towards.
Environmental education strives to illustrate the ecological interconnectedness of the natural world and the dependence of humans on the stability of the natural world. It also strives to teach students about the environmental threats to the natural world and how their actions and choices affect and are effected by what their action. Finally, environmental education is responsible for showing students what they can do to make a difference and motivating them to act now and in the future. Environmental education is striving to create informed and affective little environmentalist.

Reference:

Kerr, David. (1999). “Citizenship Education in the Curriculum: An International Review.” The School Field: http://www.theschoolfield.com/contents/vol10no34a1.html

Tbilisi Intergovernmental Conference of Environmental Education. (1978). Toward an Action Plan: A report of the Tbilisi Conference on Environmental Education. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office