A
critical environmental education consists of developing, not only among youth,
but the population in general, the capacities to analyze educational
propositions regarding the environment and dominant environmental discourses to
decode hidden ideological orientations, the beliefs and interests that direct them,
and which implicitly tend to reproduce the practices that are nevertheless the
ones that would be necessary to shift to a different kind of relationship between
nature and human beings. The reference to science and technological transfers
as the main answer to defining and correcting the problem is insufficient to
correct a situation that requires that humans also question the philosophic
foundations, sociological, political, and economic dimensions of the regulation
of climate. To reproduce the same economic logic is denounced by many as
incapable of
correcting the shameless exploitation of nature and human beings that are at
the heart of the environmental crisis.
Edgar Morin proposes principles and
a philosophy for complexity, the consideration of the
other,
and acknowledgement of uncertainty in the scientific domain. This approach
offers a vision
of
the world rethought concerning connections with nature. These principles
provide different educational aims than the principles of education for
sustainable development, prescribed in many
educational
ministerial programs on the international level. Education for sustainable
development
might
reproduce a narrow vision of nature as just a resource for better management of
economic
development
of the world.
Environmental education is
different, and strives for different goals, geared to the age of the target audience,
the pupil. In many North American school systems, environmental education
generally begins with science education, the learning of scientific knowledge
and principles, such as biology, chemistry, physics, or ecology. Many teachers
rely on the idea that a better understanding of sciences can lead to better
protection of the environment. That postulate is of interest, but it is not
enough. Environmental education must be institutionalized to reach its aim of
social transformation.
Source: Encyclopedia of Global Warming and Climate Change (Click Here)
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