By Lucas Dourojeanni
Environmental Education, Hippies and IPods®
Environmental Education (or EE from now on) is probably the single most important form of prevention that we, as society, have at our disposal to minimize or, if too late as some scientists say, prepare for future climate extremes, loss of ecosystems, wars for resources, etcetera. But, is it working? My sincere opinion, and it’s just that, is a big, fat, rotund no.
Why you may wonder? Well, let’s look at some facts.
First, environmental education as we now know it has been floating around since the late sixties, early seventies in some way or form, thus it has something to do with that hippie culture of the time;
Second, being green is great marketing but really bad for the bottom line and, let’s face it, buying mass produced IPods built with rare earth metals, long lasting lithium ion batteries and millions of gigs of storage is far more appealing and practical than carrying an acoustic guitar everywhere, learning how to play it, and memorizing all your favorite tunes, which the hippies used to do;
Third, we can barely teach kids to understand things like math, which contrary to EE has been around for thousands of years, this one I can’t pin it on the hippies unless they happen to be the teachers, and come to think about it would explain why so many of us still think that two plus two equals the colors man;
Fourth, EE has a really lousy definition which keeps changing thanks to all those who had to grow up and get real jobs to buy their acoustic guitars and take lessons and, because they couldn’t work for the evil corporations, became social scientists and teachers… Ok, ok. I’ll stop with the rant and the cheap shots at an iconic counter culture, and I sincerely apologize if anyone is feeling offended.
The real reasons why I think that such a powerful tool as EE will not help change the way we treat the environment is because it is way too fragmented in most primary and secondary school curriculums…
…and when it is actually implemented; most teachers who have to teach it are poorly trained on the subject, the core themes of EE are broken up into pieces and inserted as disjointed cross cutting themes in diverse subject matters making it very difficult to put all the ideas back together coherently. Students are also constantly bombarded with contradictory and far more powerful and effective messages that come from a myriad of sources; also, most EE happens outside of school hours, it is often a continuous learning practice, and needs a lot of extra effort not only from the students, but from teachers, parents and the community, time that involves great sacrifice with little or no rewards in the short-term.
I am not saying that there aren’t real life successful examples of EE programs. On the contrary, many independent or isolated programs run by NGO’s, Non Profit Organizations, UN related programs, and other entities in South America, Africa, Asia, and even in the good old US of A litter the internet (do a quick google search for Successful Environmental Education programs and see for yourselves). The real problem is just that most of these examples are isolated, locally run programs with communities that, for some reason or other, have felt the need to invest in this type of education with the help from a man who likes to carry an acoustic guitar and has taken the time to learn to play his favorite tunes. It is not a real priority for policy makers who prefer to press play on their brand new, zillion gigabytes, shiny, rare earth metal laden IPod.
