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CHAPTER 4. PUBLIC AWARENESS AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

4.4. Environmental Education

4.4.1. Education of Children and School Pupils

Environmental education for children provides basic information and notions about environmental protection, water ecology and mutual relationships between human activity and water quality.

The first and most important link in the chain of environment education is nursery schools. One of the main stimuli to proper child development is sensitivity to the beauty of nature, to the harmony existing in the environment, and to environmental problems. This sensitivity is an incentive to learn about the environment through the senses, feelings, will, and intelligence. Environmental education of the youngest should be conducted according to the motto "to know, to love, to protect". The best place to realize this principle is the aquatic environment, because rivers or ponds, lakes or streams can be found almost everywhere. This allows some goals increasing awareness related to water eutrophication control to be achieved, for example:

• Expressing desire and generating the ability to observe the water environment.
• Generating sensitivity to the beauty of the surrounding environment.
• Generating sensitivity to damage caused in the water environment due to human activities.
• Influencing the lifestyle and awareness of parents and the family.

The next stages of education are primary and secondary schools where the above mentioned goals should be broadened, taking into consideration such aspects as, for example:

• developing an ability to observe, study, search, and collect information about the aquatic environment and its conservation,
• learning about laws and relationships occurring in the aquatic environment,
• developing the ability to solve problems connected with protection of lakes and water reservoirs according to acquired knowledge and the adopted system of values,
• perception of lakes and water reservoirs as valuable elements of the landscape and an indispensable condition of the spatial order,
• perception of the water environment as an element indispensable for health and a standard of good living.

For the protection of lakes and water reservoirs, the school should:

• initiate and maintain contacts with local government authorities and other organizations representing local communities, schools of higher education, centres and institutes of environmental education, agencies, and institutions of state administration,
• initiate and participate in national and international programmes to increase environmental awareness,
• join national and international aquatic environmental monitoring projects,
• extend and undertake on-going practical actions to prevent eutrophication,
• show the positive role of children and school pupils in education and increasing the awareness of adults,
• initiate and conduct environmental education in its own local community.

Pre-school and primary school education should make use of the natural curiosity of children and stimulate it accordingly. The youngest children show significant interest in the world. Therefore, it is important that the child be encouraged to ask as many questions as possible and should receive proper answers. The manner of formulating answers is also important because they may be fully communicated in such a way as to encourage the child to ask further questions. Both children and young people are educated not only in schools, but also at home, in the yard, in the sand-box, on excursions, etc., in the course of establishing their relationship with the community. This takes place through the communication network. For example, through education on water developed by a Mexican non-governmental organization (NGO), Oficina de Comunicacion del Lago, specific communication dynamics between school, family, and community, were identified.

The dynamics inside the school

The communication network gives the opportunity to reinforce the educational process working as a team with the whole school. In this case, classes of older children can help classes of smaller children to learn about water.

The dynamics school-home

The family has an important influence on the knowledge and attitudes children develop about water. From their birth, children learn to have a relationship with water based on the relationship they see at home. When children start school they already have these values and behavioural patterns. Teachers must take into account that the new knowledge will reinforce these values and patterns. Unfortunately, in many cases, what children learn at school is in contradiction with what they see in their family and their daily life on relationship with water. That's why it is important to give children the basics to understand the contradictions and enable them to make their own decisions accordingly.

Relationship with the community

The community is also a source of information for the students. Inviting people in the community to talk to the children or having activities outside the school (i.e., polls, observation, interviews, etc.) can motivate children to work in their close environment. At the same time the knowledge generated in the school can reach the community through many kinds of communication activities, such as performing in theatre, exhibitions, leaflets, etc. It is important to remember that the principal objective of this relationship is to promote the information flux for mutual understanding, rather than using the children as teachers of the community.

Figure 4.3. The information flux in the environmental education system.

The directions of the information flux presented in the diagram constitute the basis for the environmental education of children conducted according to the following system:

• Working with the information that arrives from different sources to the classroom.
• Working with the information children already have. Children already hold extensive knowledge about water. By socializing this knowledge it is possible to make their relationship with water a conscious one. It also helps to develop an affective relationship with water. Conscious and affective links to water are important if we care about the durability of responsible behaviour towards water. This could be used in the future to solve problems such as eutrophication. In this case the teacher uses different tools to pull together the knowledge of water that the children already have. Once the information has been elicited, new knowledge about the issue is added. This helps to discover misunderstandings and to give the right information. It gives children the opportunity to appropriate new knowledge.
• Diffusion of the new knowledge, generated by the children, is carried out in the school, the family, and the community. Children work with the information about water that is present in the network, and develop materials and actions that help improve the information flow about water towards other children, the community, and the family.
• Many environmental education projects "use" children to send information to families. It is important to remember that children are not tools for our service and that these responsibilities, such as change in parent's behaviour, are very difficult for a child.

(continued)

Table of Contents

• Brochure
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• International Year of Forests
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• World Environment Day
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• UNEP Campaign
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