Mastering Environmental Education as an Assembled education
Overlooking all schools involved in OPEDUCA, except for 4 of the 15 in Primary and 8 of 25 in Secondary, Environmental Education (EE) was a next to school and stand-alone set of activities, mostly conducted by regional Centres of Environmental Education (CEE) who behaved as service-providers of well-rounded activities.
Across the board the CEEs took an anthropocentric protection- and value perspective, connecting to (local) issues of a more popular nature, their choice often related to the availability of 3rd party funding. With the rise of ESD we observed CEE’s conducting projects such as the ‘warm-sweater-day’, ‘plant-a-tree-day’, ‘clean-the-river-shores-week’, etc., activities rather shallow when considering the experience and knowledge generally available in the centres. Although we did not research the CEE’s clear shift in activities, we got the distinct impression more classical nature-oriented activities suffer from the service-provider concept of the centres. Complementary to our findings, a Belgian study examining the effectiveness of Eco-Schools with regard to their students’ environmental values and environmental behaviour (1.287 students from 59 schools, 38 eco-schools and 21 control schools), showed the schools’ pedagogical approach stresses utilisation- and not preservation values which are seen relevant for students’ environmental behaviour (Pauw & Petegem, 2013).
Environmental education should not be seen as a separable package but as a movement for fundamental educational reform to bring environmental and social systems together into a single conceptual structure (Smyth, 2006). Thereto we tried in practice more intensive learning experiences by ways of an involved approach, positioning the learning in and through nature to realise genuine connections between students and Earth and raise non-anthropocentric awareness. Going out in nature not because an environmental activity was scheduled but driven and steered by the students’ inquiry, offering opportunity to be out there, sense nature.
During personal exchanges with 56 students (age 11-17, 11 Study-Teams from 8 schools), they spook of the environment being ‘pushed upon’ them, of ‘nagging’ adults. Aware of their disconnectedness, views and values instructed by ways of EE-activities fed resistance. Not so much since these missed catching the students’ interest but because they did not bridge to (their) feelings. Students asked why they needed to “.. spend precious off-line time on this” (71%), spook off a ‘burden’ put on their shoulders due to constant referrals to ‘manufactured misery’ (“And what can we do about it, nothing isn’t it”). The negative image of environmental education, burdened with indoctrination and instrumentalization (Jickling & Sterling, 2017) reminded of the notion we unconsciously associate nature with doom while disassociating the outdoors from joy and solitude (Louv, 2008).
Looking this in the eye, results were quite different when we for example joined students to a riverside without any goal, sensing their active mode became served by silence, simply walking through nature without the sound of conscious interaction. Merely standing there until observations fed sensations (smell, dirt, a duck landing on the water) the students tried to express (“Then to imagine we eventually gone drink this”, “No, stupid, we do not drink river water, or do we?”). Without rigorous analyses, experiences like these made us considerer the importance of staying away from any paternalistic intention, realising ESD and underlying EE in the interest of children does not mean it has to be done in a childish way. As argued (6.2.2) others cannot make a meaningful experience happen, only enhance the likeliness it occurs.
As a small experiment, we questioned 21 students from 7th primary (11-12 years old) having taken part in the ‘National Plant a Tree’-day one month earlier. Not referring to that activity, we challenged class to go out with their mobiles and swiftly app a picture of a water-pump. On return we clarified the ‘mission impossible’ by pointing out nearby oaks being most magnificent water-pumps. Following which a student hesitantly said she had inquired with her teacher when planting the trees (“You know, we had this celebration, and the mayor was there and cake”) if these would not one day cause the neighbouring cornfield to fall dry. A question that had not made it back to the classroom. Such apparent lack of meaning of EE-activities we noticed numerous times, feeding into weak notions of ESD whereas it should regard “concerns which differ substantially from those of litter, nature study and the planting of trees in the school grounds and other apolitical and aesthetic work that has often been the focus of much school-level environmental education in the past” (Fien & Tilbury, 2002).
An encouraging example taken from a Flight or Knowledge on Water can be recounted when students in secondary picked up from a narrative that the population of female fish in a nearby river was large. Guided by the explanatory reasoning of a biologist of the regional Water-authority, who led them via the concentration of medicine residues in wastewater to an understanding of the biological, chemical and mechanical filter-systems, the students’ attention was captured as they noticed their own (presumed) behaviour as an underlying cause (the use of birth-control medication). Obviously, the OPEDUCA-approach later also led to discussions why an abundance of female fish was relevant to begin with.
Whereas Environmental Education in the meaning of the OPEDUCA-concept is close to the original joint complex of ecology and human life, such seemed to have withered away from present day Environmental Education. A development not corrected but worsened by weak interpretations of ESD, presenting social issues which may or may not be related to the environment (Kopnina, 2012) and not linking environmental protection to intrinsic values of non-human species (Johannesson, Norđdahl, Oskarsdottir, Palsdottir, & Petursdottir, 2011). As found, people feeling ill or unjustly informed, lacking a sense of ownership, try to make up their own minds where it comes to the harm and protection of nature, (Macnaghten & Urry, 1998). Students’ sensation of nature as ‘problem-zone’ relates to a missing connection with the encompassing dimension Earth. While their minds are open for the positive, wanting to hold a cheerful outlook and see the future in terms of opportunities, possibilities and hope, nature is pushed upon them as a negative. A recent German study showed only 66% of youngsters see nature as an attribute of a good life while only 46% state to be happy when being in nature (Mole, 2021).
How does one find time and opportunity to save a glacier in the Himalayas or care for the wellbeing of penguins, when facing young hopes, uncertainties and puberal needs? Does it activate constructive learning and inform action to march the streets on a Friday, watch the cuddly Disney-resolve bringing animals to life in most bizarre ways and trample around with GPS-assignments?
In summary, we have seen Environmental Education to drift away from its roots, CEE’s becoming budget-driven service providers who grasp the opportunity of ESD to re-label and survive, however follow anthropocentric ideas and programs of others that are contra-productive to its course.
