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ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCAmON TODAY A nascent discipline that “is beginning to work in small yet significant ways’’
Clay Schoenfeld University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, Wis. 53706 John Disinger The Ohio State UniGersity Columbus, Ohio 43210 It is imperative at the outset to agree on a working definition of “environmental education.” There is by no means a consensus. The latest definitive book on the subject offers “no clear, single answer” to “what makes education environmental.” The definition that would probably get as many votes as any among professional environmental educators is that which evolved from a recent Belgrade conference under U N E S C O auspices. There are a number of ‘‘loaded’’ terms in that definition that help ac28
Environmental Science & Technology
count for both the problems and the potentials of environmental education.
Defining the discipline First, environmental education is “life-long.” Some of our environmental problems cannot wait the arrival of a new generation with a surer ecological conscience. Some environmental problems the next generation will face are now not in our ken. So environmental education programs have to encompass all ages continually. Because environmental education is not just what happens in the conventional sixth-grade science unit on conservation, it has not been possible to “package” it as we have been able to do with driver education, for example. Nor has it been possible to work through only one echelon of the country’s educational apparatus, or only
one set of local, state, or federal bureaus, or only one level of parentteacher associations. Second, environmental education is “multidisciplinary.” While the biological and physical sciences enable us to discover and understand the basic operations of the biosphere, it is the social sciences and the humanities that enable us to discover and deal with human perceptions of and interactions with natural ecosystems. Even more fundamentally, environmental education is concerned with the interrelationships among the fields of knowledge, if only in response to the basic ecological principle that everything is connected to everything else. The multidisciplinary nature of environmental education again has made it difficult to penetrate the established organization of our educational system.
0013-936X/78/0912-0028$01.00/0
@ 1978 American Chemical Society
Environmental education.
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It is from its complicated nature, however, that environmental education offers the greatest possibilities for progress. Its multidisciplinary nature is exerting significant impact on teaching, research, and public service. Its multi-process characteristic capitalizes on the manifold communication avenues that exist in a democracy. And the focus of environmental education on a search for solutions to public problems stimulates that ever-needed link between learning and life.
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a life-long, multidisciplinary approach to teaching, mass communication, community participation, or some other activity aimed at the development of a world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the environment and its associated problems and that has the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations, and commitment to work individually and collectively toward solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones. Third, environmental education is multi-process. What might be called the environmental education system includes all media of communications, government agencies, voluntary associations, business and labor, and a wide range of informal educational organintions, as well as schools and colleges. There can be no single environmental education curriculum, instructional method or learning mode. Finally, environmental education assumes a certain consensus on “current problems” and on their “solutions.” The fact that environmental education has a public problem-solving stance renders it a volatile proposition for both public school teachers and college professors, more comfortable-and safer--in the antiseptic confines of the classroom. Tr) dttacking blatant water pollution in a papermill town, or excessive air conditioning in the Sun Belt!
Enlironmental education act Environmental education was not born wJith the Environmental Educational Act of 1970. All P.L. 9 1-5 16 did was provide token federal institutionalization. As we have defined the term. the roots of environmental education go back to the nineteenth century. Environmental action in modern form may be said to date from 1954 when an unprecedented consortium of conservation groups successfully blocked a major dam that would have flooded Dinosaur National Monument. What came to be called environmental communication hit full stride in I962 with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. This was followed in rapid order b) Steuart Udall’s Quiet Crisis, a paperback edition of Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, and Robert and Leona Rienows’ Moment in the Sun, Barr) Commoner‘s The Closing Circle, and Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb. The term “environmental education“ \ \ a s coined in 1964. and a 1968
issue of Education Krcord carried an article on “The University and Environmental Education.“ A 1969 issue of the Pennsylvania Education Association‘s journal was devoted to environmental education, and the same year saw the appearance of Thr Journal of Enrironnwntal Ediccation. On the crest of E-Day in the Spring of 197.0, every general circulation magazine in the countr)’ carried a cover story on environmental issues. Today there are 93 specialized environmental publications u.ith significant readerships. So the Environmental Education Act of 1970 was the expression of a movement, not its progenitor. The Act called for an investment of $4 million in 1971 and increasing amounts thereafter. but only $2 million a year has ever been appropriated. In 1971, out of 1925 proposals onl), 71 were funded, and 37 of those were for less than S IO 000 each. The next !‘ear, the C.S. Office of Education “lost” the annual appropriation in its bookkeeping system. A posture of benign neglect continues to characterize the ad m i nistration of the Act. It is currentl! in a ”lame duck“ year. But the Act has had sqmbolic importance exceeding its omn substance. A s an expression of the \ + i l l of Congress. it has opened up to environni e n t a 1 education program s other sources of federal funds. such a s the Water Resource Research Act of 1964. the Elementar) and Secondar), Education Act of 1965. the Higher Education Act of 1965. the Vocational Education Amendments of 1968. and
enough to withstand a variety of traumas without loss of identity. But the cultural intrusions of modern man have reduced ecological variety and have threatened 1 of stability to various ecosystems and ultimately to total biosphere.
the rate and extent a t atural and human reated, must be consid-
1 and sociotogical evolutionary
natural and built m y s t e m s are adaptive
Once seemingly efficient technologies and cultures have proven counter-productive in that they fail to function symbiotically with natural systems and human nature. I f an environment capable of fulfilling humankind’s higher-order aesthetic and humanistic needs is to be restored and maintained, certain value reorientations, some difficult tradeoffs, and some changes in life-style are in order. Environmental protection calls for a public decisionmaking process equipped for surveillance of the total ment and capable of imposing long-range ecoocial, or legal sanctions against those elements presenting a threat t o the public interest. Volume 12, Number 1, January 1978
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the continuing appropriations to the Cooperative Extension Service, the National Science Foundation, and the Sea Grant Program. All told, however, the U.S.’s investment in environmental education has not been in keeping with the magnitude of the task. By and large, the cost of environmental education has been assumed by local and state educational systems, and by voluntary associations that have been in the vanguard of environmental action. One federal act, however, has made a major impact on public environmental education. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 pronounced environmental quality an official American goal and, to that end, required that any major expenditures of federal funds be accompanied by an environmental impact statement (EIS). Many states followed suit. The EIS requirement gave substance to cross-disciplinary instruction in public schools, lent focus to curricular innovations in colleges and universities, gave the news media an important point of entry to environmental coverage, energized the campaigns of voluntary associations, and confronted government agencies and private industries with the realities of the environmental decade.
What’s being taught? In a country where local control of public education is an article of faith and fact, it is very difficult to generalize about the current nature of environmental education, particularly in the absence of any current national survey. The US.Office of Education has yet to render a meaningful report on what federal monies have produced under the modest programs funded. In a recently published book, Environmental Education in Action, the authors have tried to identify and describe some representative public school activities today. In essence, environmental education in the elementary and secondary schools is a relatively new approach to teaching about our relationship to our environment, an integrated process dealing with our natural and manmade surroundings, aimed toward developing behavior patterns that will enhance our survival in a world of finite resources. Environmental education is not simple nature study or outdoor resource management, although they are properly included; it is not a cumbersome new program requiring big outlays of funds or a self-contained course to be added to an already crowded curriculum. 30
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While environmental education programs may differ greatly in their details, most of them thus share certain common characteristics. First, a recognition of environmental problems on a scale transcending yesterday’s concerns. Second, a hard core of ecological content, presented with varying degrees of rigor. Third, a component of conscience, of a value system. Fourth, a commitment to private and public action. And fifth, a focus on a comprehensive rather than compartmentalized approach to change in manenvironment relationships.
life-styles of high environmental integrity, the consequences of maintaining such life-styles are not generally well communicated. Where do such concerns fit within a departmentalized, compartmentalized curriculum? They are not among the “basics,” in the sense of the three R’s, nor are they solely the concern of science, or social studies, or the language arts, or the humanities, or vocational education. Are students intellectually equipped to deal with such complex problems on the primary level? If so, they are one-up on their elders. In which of the 45-minute “piWhat is not being taught? geonholes” does environmental eduEnvironmental education has not cation belong? If it belongs in more been accorded a primary place, even a than one, how should it be coordinated clear place, in the curricula of t h e ’ between/among them? Should it be a
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Freshwater biology. These students are getting a practical exercise at the National Wildlife Federation’s Consercation S u m m i t schools. Much lip service has been rendered within the educational community to the environmental cause, particularly in the present decade, but concomitant outpouring of coordinated support has been lacking. There has been no environmental equivalent to the educational space race of the 1950’s, no NSF-style (and level) of support for environmental education. Certainly, there has been no lack of recognition of environmental problems in the classroom, but such recognition often surfaces on a simplistic, emotional level. The idea of “punishing” industry for its participation in environmental degradation is easy to espouse, but the question of how to chastise the perpetrator and correct the problem without massive negative societal effects is tougher and not so readily addressed. While it is not difficult to preach the “morality” of
separate “subject”? If so, who would teach it? And in all cases, at what expense in terms of time and space for the remainder of the curriculum, including those items that have been there traditionally and those others that press for curricular consideration? These questions are easier to ask than to answer: no attempts at responses are made here. But a few simple facts are evident. There are, have been, and will continue to be heavy pressures on the schools to expand their roles as social agencies as well as to include more and more specialized subject matters in response to a multiplicity of specialized concerns. There is, has been, and will continue to be strong interest in returning to the basics. Concurrently, there is, has been, and will continue to be massive criticism of a perceived lack of effec-
tiveness on the part of the schools in performing such functions. Again concurrently, tightening public monies has made it increasingly difficult for the schools to respond to new demands, to cope with multiphased criticisms, even to determine what priorities are appropriate, or at least acceptable. It might be easier if the schools were to tell the public what the schools can and cannot do, but taking a strong stand when the school budget comes up for public approval annually is not easy. Many of its proponents see environmental education as a process rather than a bod)! of content. The common denominators we have listed above imply a marriage of content and process. They demand a real-world context rather than a set of abstrac-
clues for useful, functional approaches.
The role of science and technology One of the most significant features of the science curriculum reforms of the 1950’s and ~ O ’ S ,as evidenced by many NSF-supported preuniversity educational efforts, was the involvement of professional scientists in the orientation, selection, and development of teaching materials for preuniversity science instruction. At least a t the outset, scientists insisted that the “what” was less important than the “why.” We will stipulate that primary and secondary school science subjects are better taught today than before the days of PSSC, CHEMS, CBA, BSCS,
Oldsters participate. There is no aze barrier to encironmental education as this New York state program illustrates tions and a clean set of academic ex- ESCP, IPS, HPP, ISCS, SAPA. ESS, ercises. At the same time, however, and their siblings, though some may these denominators require solid con- not accept this viewpoint. One of the ceptual bases in both the natural and costs, however, has been less attention social sciences plus development of an to “practical” concerns, to societal environmental conscience. Above all, needs, and to real-life problems than is they are predicated on an integrated appropriate to environmental educaview of the world, what it really is, how tion. it all fits together, how the resolution Education in the social sciences, of one set of problems may initiate both primary and secondary, has hisanother set. torically not been concerned with I t seems reasonable to say that contemporary problems though we will schools deal effectively with environ- again stipulate that the “modern” mental education to the extent that K- 12 social studies have made giant they are successful in integrating those strides from the older-style political common denominators. Unfortunate- histories. What attention has been dily, it is not easy; it is not frequently rected toward the contemporary scene accomplished. Those somewhat suc- has not focused on inherent scientific cessful environmental educational and technologic realities. Unfortuproblems have no rigid commonality nately, C. P. Snow’s delineation of “the of approach, no sacred set of subject two cultures” has not created an immatter. At best, such programs can pact sufficient to generate action in serve as imperfect models that furnish closing that gap with respect to either
organizational patterns or curricular concerns; neither have the admonitions of others who support integrated views or decry the separatism of the natural and social sciences. Perhaps the greatest contribution that might be made by science and technology in fundamental environmental education is in communicating its content and the social, political, and economic implications of its content, in language intelligible to the oft-targeted but elusive “intelligent layman.” If environmental education is essential for everyone, as its proponents would insist, it follows that it must be presented in ways that are readily understandable. Science and technology are not the proper decision-makers here, any more than are politics, economics, or sociology. Educators must make the decisions of what to teach, how, and when, bringing into full play their expertise in how learning is properly and most appropriately facilitated. But they need help, and desperately, in knowing the truths of the complexities of the environment, the tradeoffs, the potential outcomes.
Getting iniolved, earlier The “pollution mess” that scientists and engineers are called upon to clean up is often a mess they had a hand in making. As Eric Hirst, an Oak Ridge res e a r c h en g i ne e r , has written , “Technology is one of the basic causes of our current environmental problems; engineers and scientists must share in the blame.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologists who refined DDT as an insecticide at Orlando, Florida, in 1942 had no idea, of course, that they were putting at eventual hazard the lives of eagles and humans; they were making Pacific swamps safe for soldiers. The physicists who unleased the power of the atom a t Los Alamos i n 1945 were likewise bent on winning a war. Yet, as historian Roderick Nash says, “The conclusion cannot be avoided: science, undiluted with ethical and humanitarian influences, can be humankind’s greatest problem rather than its greatest blessing.” Clearly. environmental education has a role to play in the education of future scientists and engineers. Environmental science is not a synonym for environmental education. The sciences, of course, play a major role in any program of environmental education, but only one role. To address any environmental problem at its roots is to deal with the fundamental cause-man and his ideas, as Nash emphasizes. The undergraduate education of scientists and engineers that Volume 12, Number 1, January 1978
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Some current public school activities A New Jersey computer-based resource information font for teachers wishing to confront their students with environmental concepts, problems, issues, and options. A Maine network of local programs tied to a central demonstration program to heighten public awareness in maintaining and improving the quality of the total environment. An Indiana program built around 5-day visits by fifth graders to a nature center. An Ohio applied science learning unit for secondary school students with a community action concern. A Montana project featuring cooperation between the Bureau of Land Management and local schools. An Iowa program involving active student participation in the political processes necessary to implement solutions to environmental problems.
does not include such a departure is an anachronism today. At the level of the professional master’s degree, environmental education is increasingly represented by a program composed of equal increments of science and technology, public decision-making processes, analytical and design tools, and synthesis and integration. Research training leading to the Ph.D: likewise is increasingly recognizing the legitimacy of team investigations that break out of the straightjackets of conventional disciplines. Many universities in their extension programs are offering refresher courses for practicing scientists and engineers in the political and ethical dimensions of technology. In turn, scientists and engineers can and should make significant contributions to environmental education programs. Objective by nature, scientists can replace with ecological data the emotional tenor of many environmental debates. Pragmatic by training, engineers can serve to keep discussions on a real-world level. Both can help identify technological solutions that violate the first or second laws of thermodynamics and both can indicate what technologies are available yet underutilized. That environmental education is headed in the right direction is confirmed by one very simple test. At one representative state university, we compared the course offerings in the years 1965-66 and 1975-76 in terms of how many course titles included the words ecology, ecological, environment, environmental, or energy. Discounting the shortcomings of this test, the net figure is still striking: a 443% increase in course offerings in the 10 years. The engineering school alone 32
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A Pennsylvania curriculum aimed at developing attitudes and understandings rather than strictly the exposure to information. The outreach work of the TVA with Tennessee Valley schools. A computerized urban planning game focused on an air pollution control exercise. Florida’s state-funded environmental education apparatus. An Alabama curriculum that confronts pupils with issues and options. A California schoolyard classroom devoted to the discussion of an ecological life-style and “appropriate” technology. A well-tested Wisconsin curriculum materials development system.
had a 338% increase. The summer term by itself had a 900% increase. Hopefully, academia’s new environmental cast will produce a citizenry with an ecological conscience a t last.
What is needed? What important questions regarding environmental education ought educational researchers be formulating? An answer might include these queries. What modes of learning are best adapted to environmental education? What is the role of concept understanding in attitude formation, or vice versa? What is the nature of values as they affect behavior change, if they do? How can environmental education (EE) concepts be integrated into existing curricula? At what grade levels should specific concepts be taught? Does knowledge of EE concepts necessarily affect behavior? Can we accurately measure values with current methods? At the post-secondary level, should general environmental studies precede, follow, or be taken concurrently with professional environmental regimens? How can we best determine the worth of an agency or method in meeting the over-all goals of EE? How does the determination and dissemination of relevant facts and the classification of values influence environmental attitudes? How can we maintain the distinction between teaching and preaching, between education and indoctrination? Imposed values are not lasting guides for behavior. Accepting and implementing this simple rule may well be the single most difficult aspect of environmental education at all levels. That some of these issues, and others, are increasingly being ad-
dressed is evidenced by representative papers presented by educators a t the 1977 convention of the National Association for Environmental Education. When all is said and done, however, there are no Nielsen ratings for measuring public participation in environmental education or any environm’ental I Q tests to measure our national level of ecological literacy. It would not make any difference if there were. The payoff in environmental education is in individual and collective action for an environment capable of sustaining life processes and fit for sanative living. On that score, the record is surely mixed. The authors are inclined to believe, however, that environmental education is beginning to work in small yet significant ways.
Clay Schoenfeld (1) is joint professor of journalism and wildlife ecology, and chairman of the Centerf o r Environmental Communications and Education Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prof Schoenfeld. a founding editor of The Journal of Environmental Education, also helped draft the National Environmental Education Act of 1970. John Disinger (r) is associate professor of environmental education in the School of Natural Resources and associate director of the Educational Resources Information Center f o r Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education (ERIC/ S M E A C ) at The Ohio State Unicersity. Coordinated by L R E
