Infusion Versus Insertion—The Problems with Our Presentation

David C. Engleson of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction writes:

"To many educators, teaching ‘units’ is ‘infusion’, but I would call it ‘insertion,’ and consider it as separate from the rest of the curriculum as a special course would be. To me, ‘infusion’ means that EE is built into the teaching of just about everything…as we promote infusion of EE throughout the curriculum, we will not discourage such courses, but will try to encourage teachers involved to make them much more issue-oriented than they are currently."

There is an association of EE w/ science, and very few instances of teaching relationships betw/ environmental topics and social studies. The human element has often been removed, and that focus has begun to change in the 1990’s in many parts of the country.

Science (on the elementary level) is too often thought of in terms of plants and animals as separate things, and relationships are not always stressed in the best manner.

Are school districts willing to restructure to "fit" EE in the curricula? Or will they just insert it into sciences and lose the real sense of the human element and the effect on social studies?

We recognize that our own project is a form of insertion—that it is one isolated example in a series of lessons to commemorate Earth Week. For that, our project is necessarily limited, but we have ultimately tried to emphasize values in the limited time that we had to present. But for EE to really take off at the elementary level, it needs to be integrated and infused across disciplines. Attitudes and values need to be developed in all levels of learning and all subjects. EE is truly a process, a way of life, and not an isolated event or subject.

We have encouraged the students to take active roles and write to the school board and to their congressman, giving them their support for a curriculum that emphasizes attitudes and develops an environmental ethic. In writing to the congressman, the students hope to send a message that they are interested in these attitudes about the environment integrating into the policy-making process. While these small steps may not lead to substantive changes at first, increments must be taken to begin to alter social attitudes regarding the environment and environmental education.