What is Environmental Education?

Environmental education is aimed at producing a citizenry that is knowledgeable concerning the biophysical environment and its associated problems, aware of how to help solve these problems, and motivated to work toward their solution.

                                    William B. Stapp, University of Michigan

Our Nation’s future relies on a well-educated public to be wise stewards of the very environment that sustains us, our families and communities, and future generations. It is environmental education which can best help us as individuals make the complex, conceptual connections between economic prosperity, benefits to society, environmental health and our own well being. Ultimately, the collective wisdom of our citizens, gained through education, will be the most compelling and most successful strategy for environmental management. National Environmental Education Advisory Council, Draft Report to Congress, September 2000

An outgrowth of the burgeoning environmental consciousness of the late 1960s and early 1970s, environmental education is fundamentally different from earlier forms of “nature education” because it explicitly addresses the interrelationships between humans and the environment. Unlike its primary antecedents – nature studies, outdoor education, and conservation education – which addressed nature objectively, environmental education:

·         includes a human component in the exploration of environmental problems and solutions,

·         rests on a foundation of knowledge about social as well as ecological systems,

·         includes the affective domain (attitudes, values and commitments), and

·         includes opportunities to build problem-solving skills.

With these new emphases, education for the environment was added to the earlier components, education about the environment, and education in the environment.

Environmental education is only one of several pathways through which environmental information and messages reach the public, but what distnguishes it from the other pathways are:

·         Its focus on life-long learning rather than short-term outcomes;

·         Its emphasis on teaching how to think, not what to think; and

·         Its goal of changing fundamental values and developing problem-solving skills, not just motivating particular actions.