What are the benefits of environmental education at school?
Environmental education can bring many benefits to schools: greater awareness of environmental issues leads to better skills for solving environmental problems and a greater appreciation of nature.
By bringing together science, philosophy, civic education and literature, environmental education could give students the skills they need to tackle environmental problems successfully, such as the ability to identify sources of pollution and assess potential solutions. Greater awareness of the value of nature will mean that student-citizens are more likely to protect and preserve the natural environment, both through individual action and through collective action as a community.
What might the obstacles to environmental education be?
The main obstacles to environmental education in schools are the chronic ones of the Italian school system: a lack of funding and resources, and limited flexibility in some schools when designing curricula.
Schools should also lead by example: by adopting ecological tools, such as reusable notebooks and pencils, and tablets and electronic devices that encourage reuse, without any of this translating into additional costs for families.
School curricula are in need of a thorough overhaul across the sciences, which have always been the weak point of Italian schooling. Environmental education should be promoted not only through the memoranda of understanding currently drawn up between the Ministry and other bodies, but by introducing it into curricula as a proper subject in its own right, following the example of what was done in previous years with civic education.
Teachers’ curricula are just as important: they should include skills showing the ability to convey the concepts and practices of sustainability with teaching professionalism.
The goals
It is important to remember that the aim of environmental education is not to produce a generation of eco-activists. Rather, it is to help students develop the skills, knowledge and attitudes needed to engage in sustainable practices, so that, as the citizens of today and tomorrow, they can contribute to the necessary changes knowingly.
So...
From early childhood to higher education, learning opportunities abound for exploring the link between school and environmental sustainability. By exploring this link, students can acquire the knowledge and skills they need to make a significant difference to the planet.
The Ministry of Education and Merit has a page dedicated to ‘environmental education and sustainability’. At the moment, however, the subsections with the main topics are empty. https://www.miur.gov.it/web/guest/educazione-ambientale-e-alla-sostenibilità
