Environmental Education in A Global Context

By Benjamin M. on Wednesday, 4 October , 2006 - 8:39 am

As the word “developed” implies, such countries can sometimes be rigid and infertile in terms of accepting new ideas in education. Granted, the conventional education system in India has its shares of challenges. It is bogged down by overpopulation, and also it is molded on the British colonial system that was more interested in producing good laborers than empowered individuals. Howerver, alongside this quantitative system, some very innovative and comprehensive qualitative projects have flourished, sometimes in the form of village schools, sometimes in the form of experimental schools. Often, these schools are able to explore new avenues because of the less constraining educational structures in place, or because of their ability to boycott a given education board on the basis that a school is better than no school.

There seems to be some evidence (Chazot, 2005) that the implicit and subconscious cultural influence plays an important role in the acceptance and openness in innovative practices. The oriental mindset is better-equipped to integrate changes in education, i.e.: in making the link between global realities (ecology) and academics.

A lot of the global issues being talked about today are those brought about by developed countries and directly affecting developing countries. The reality of these issues is much more tangible for students in developing countries who are, for instance, faced with contaminated water, rather than for students in the US who have been drinking tap water all their lives. When a school in a developing country genuinely understands its responsibilities, it can take up an issue that is very real to the students and their communities and often be very much at the center of global ecological concerns, making for a very rich learning experience.

Developed countries hear about greenhouse gas emissions, and toxic wastes being dumped into rivers, contaminated water and foods. Parents tell their kids, “there are children dying of hunger in the world and here you are wasting your food”, it’s absolutely true, but often far to removed a reality for children to understand. It took me until the age of 21 when I was in Cambodia to realize what those words meant, because just outside the terrace of the restaurant where I was eating, were children begging for my food. The food was terrible, and the restaurant staff would not let me give it to the children. I wound up forcing myself to finished the entire plate as the children looked on. That’s when I realized the meaning behind the cliché. There is a real challenge for schools in developed countries to make learners connect with global issues that are in other parts of the world and that seemingly have no direct impact on the learners’ life. How can we make students of developed countries experience this reality? What actions can they take? Learners of developing countries have very concrete material to work with, students of developed countries are confined to examining policies. While reviewing policies is essential, at the K-12 level, policies make for a very abstract experience. It’s this abstraction which fails to connect developed countries with global ecological realities, and it’s why residents of developed countries have no qualms about living grossly unsustainable lifestyles. This kind of environmental education is all the more important in a post-modern world where energy and environmental resources are the root cause of wars and other humanitarian conflicts.
If we are merely talking about abstract education from textbooks, then there is no learning worth mentioning in either developed or developing countries. What makes the learning experience empowering is taking action. Taking notes on pollution and visiting a recycling plant does little to sensitize learners. They need to be engaged in projects where they conceive and implement sustainable systems, or where they create sustainable products. If we really want to inculcate a rock-solid ecological foundation in students, telling them what they ought to be doing has no impact, showing them has some impact, but the success comes when learners can show us a new way of looking at these issues. The point is not to limit them to our knowledge and problem-solving skills by giving them ready-made answers, but to help them build their own. At MGIS, we achieve this goal by initiating projects like the Ecofridge Project, where students have a say in where the project is going, and actually go to visit villagers’ homes to understand the reality of the issues, and also to assess the effectiveness of their thinking in practice.

We don’t actually teach environment as a separate subject, but by taking on a project as per our pedagogy of Generated Resource Learning (GRL) (Chazot & Musafir, 2003), we cover competencies in science, languages, humanities, technology and other subjects throughout the course of a project. Essentially, we aim to make the learners not just aware of global issues, but proactive. More than passively reacting to government policy issues, we seek to educate human beings that will demand these more comprehensive environmental policies. And to do so, we equip the learners with a strong sense of responsibility towards the environment and with the tools to take informed and sensible decisions on related issues. Learners at MGIS become environmentally active from a young age in order to construct their reality of the world with this in mind.

References for this write impromptu article:
Chazot, P. (2005). Manuscript to be published
Chazot, P., Musafir, A. (2003). Une session thérapeutique en Inde. Cahiers Pedagogiques, 412: 71-73

Category: Research, Thoughts on Education

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