Enviornmental Education

I think that the most interesting thing that we have discussed this semester is environmental education. As the philosopher John Dewey said, “The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative.”

I think that an effective environmental education needs to be experienced based, but the experience need to be good one. You can sit and tell me about something all day long but I won’t retain any of it. I need hands on experience, genuine experience. Not just unrelated activities. For example; instead of wasting money and sending schools on field trips to amusement parks, send them to the recycling center. First of all, I’m sure it would be cheaper than Busch Gardens. Additionally, they students would gain a huge amount of knowledge relating to recycling habits and resources. They would learn how the process goes about and more information related to recycling. I believe that if more students were exposed to this information that would be more knowledgeable about it and would more likely to use it in their everyday lives. Another great idea for a field trip would be the ECHO farm. I have gained a tremendous amount of information in only a few visits!

I think that environmental education should be taught throughout a child’s entire educational career. It is much harder to change someone’s way of living than it is to teach them the right way to live. Environmental education in higher levels should be more focused and detailed. The students should have already gained the knowledge that is taught in the University Colloquium class and they should instead be required to go into a deeper level of knowledge in a special area, like marine sustainability. Instead of just giving up the very broad view of sustainability focus on one part of it and going into depth. More depth than breadth is what higher education should focus on. I went to Florida Southern College in Lakeland and there was no Environmental class we had to take. We could take one as an option, but it was not required. I’m sure this is the case at many other schools. I think it should be required everywhere and at all grade levels.

The world’s biggest problem right now is that we are not educated about the environment to the extent that we should be. Yea... we all know what recycle means.... but what happens if we don’t do it? What happens if we don’t start using renewable resources? We run out... duh! But that does that mean? What is going to happen if we don’t open our eye and start living smarter? This should be the focus in environmental education at all levels.