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A new beginning for environmental education in Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

A. Greenall
A. Greenall*
Affiliation:
Department of Arts, Heritage and Environment, Canberra
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Extract

In 1980-81 when I last wrote about the future of environmental education in Australian schools I was quite pessimistic and concluded that environmental education had been a phenomenon of the affluent seventies in Australia. This conclusion was based on observations, reading and experience with schools, education authorities and curriculum projects over the preceding seven years.

Environmental education aims to develop not only awareness, understanding and skills. Most importantly, it also aims to encourage feelings of concern for the environment and protection. This means that it is concerned with social reconstruction — environmental education programs must have moral and political components if they are to achieve the accepted aims of environmental education. In 1980-81 I argued that environmental education had been subjected to incorporation within the existing hegemoney of schools in a neutralised form — the radical ‘action’ components of the environmental education aims had been deleted from school programs whilst the less controversial cognitive and skill aims had been retained, together with the name ‘environmental education’. There was evidence that programs of this genre had increased during the seventies, including an increased environmental content in traditional subjects in the curriculum. In general terms there was little inducement for schools to implement all the aims of environmental education.

Type
Research Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 13 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

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