Environmental
Education as Process
Environmental
Education as Process
In our CORE 114 class, the idea of process was emphasized in conjunction with the notion of attitudes and values. It is not necessarily the end decision that matters, but the process of complex thought used to arrive at those decisions. Such complex thought helps engender attitudes and values that encourage a moral responsibility for ourselves, to our environment, our families, and our fellow humans. By using an interactive class presentation and focusing discussion specifically on attitudes, we tried to introduce this concept in the fourth-grade classroom.
However, Noel McInnis takes the idea of process one step further in You are an Environment (1972). "Environmental Education is not just something to be taught and learned…[It] is a way of teaching and learning" (29). In effect, it is itself a process. "What ultimately makes education environmental is not its subject matter, but its procedures" (43). Thus, environmental education is not a subject but a view of life, an acceptance of certain values where humans are not the center of the universe and have a moral obligation to all other inhabitants of this world. The goal of elementary environmental education is to introduce these values by discussing the interdependencies that exist between elements of the earth (including humans’ place in these complex webs). In demonstrating the relationships between fungi, snakes, worms, water, birds, deer, and humans (and all other elements of the earth), we hope students will begin to think of their actions in terms of the consequences they may have.
Infusion Versus Insertion—The Problems with Our Presentation