Greetings,
First entry for the EC's blog from the EC Coordinator's Desk. Leading up to our Youth-Powered Earth Week Celebration, we decided to feature the topic of youth empowerment. Here's a question for those interested in such matters....Should environmental education for youth focus on teaching appreciation and love of the natural world or focus on changing the world by passing on concrete, community problem-solving skills? The easy answer is both.
But let's not make it easy. Say you've gotten a grant to start up a program for sixth graders. You have to choose a focus. You either teach these young people how to identify trees or how get their school to start a recycling program.
For many years, conventional wisdom in environmental education was to start with apreciation and then move to knowledge and then start teaching problem-solving skills. The problem was that surveys of EE programs showed that students never got to these higher-order outcomes. Other research has shown that the supposed link between knowledge and action is not there. More knowledge can create apathy and despair.
An alternative is to jump right into problem-solving, but without an appreciation for the natural world, problem-solving loses its mooring. Without experience of the non-human, it is easier for youth to discount its value.
I've worked in environmental education for almost twenty years and tried it both ways. Forced to pick, I would teach problem-solving first with numerous breaks for rolling in the leaves and starring at stars.
What do you think?
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2 comments:
I think my experince in science and nature camps as a kid has really inspired me to take on projects and "action" as an adult. It would have been fun and inspirational to get involved as a kid in such projects as starting a recycling program at my school, but I feel that those are skills and experinces that I can learn later on in life. It was more important to learn to love nature as a kid by just being out in it and learning about what type of tree and flower that is, and how those rocks were formed, and what kind of animals live in that river
i would second that earlier experiences while being involved in environmentally related activities do lead to a higher awareness of the natural. once they are entrenched, i believe, they never forget their experience. this could be because kids are more receptive earlier on, charged with something they are responsible for most kids will do their best or ask somebody a question. first its about getting outside, away from tv and videogames for at least an hour a day to just BE subject to natural light and wind!
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