The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : `Environmental education not just a subject'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 21, 2007
ePaper

Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

`Environmental education not just a subject'

Staff Reporter

NCERT team interacts with children and teachers from schools

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Environmental education in schools should not remain just a subject but should be conducted in such a manner as will infuse concern about the environment in the minds of children, M. Chandra, chairperson, Environmental Education Core Group, National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), has said.

Dr. Chandra, along with the group convener Jayashree Sharma, was participating in a discussion on environmental education with children and teachers from select city schools here on Tuesday. Children and teachers from Cotton Hill Government Girls' Higher Secondary School; Model Higher Secondary School; SMV Higher Secondary School; Government HSS, Pattom; and St. Mary's HSS, Pattom; took part in the interactive session.

At the outset, Dr. Chandra laid out the parameters of the discussion by asking students to answer three questions - how was environmental education given to them in school, could such education be imparted using other methods/through other subjects, and what did the student community feel about receiving environmental education. All the students who spoke to the core team members said they were happy to study about the environment but that they wanted something more than just theoretical education. One student suggested that environmental education should be made into a separate subject with an examination. Another wanted more practical, real life, exposure to environmental issues. To this, Dr. Chandra said her team wanted schools to give students more projects. "Otherwise the students may study environment for an examination and forget about it afterwards," Ms. Sharma added.

A student from Cotton Hill GHSS said there was virtually no link between life in school and life outside school; that what was taught as environmental issues in schools was rarely required to be related to daily life. She also pointed out that environmental education was being taught in a very detached manner with virtually no practical content.

To this, Dr. Chandra replied that when her team went to a school in a particular State, it found that while the school compound was kept clean and that students were given marks to keep it that way, the road outside the school gate was full of filth. Schools should be ready to take children out of the school environment and into real life so that they could get practical exposure to environmental issues, she said.

The teachers who spoke said they preferred teaching about the environmental aspects of a particular topic as and when they taught that topic in class and not deal with environment as a separate chapter.

The team members also recounted their experiences during similar visits to other States. They were full of praise for the very practical rain harvesting system that they saw in each house in Mizoram and pointed out to the students that for the children in Mizoram, rainwater harvesting was not an environmental concept but a reality of daily life. Department of Higher Secondary Education director V. Karthikeyan Nair also participated.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Kerala

News Update

Stories in this Section