The need for an appropriate environmental education

Since the formulation of the National Environmental Policy and the establishment of the ministry of Science, Technology and Environment in the mid 1970s, there has been an upsurge of interest in the environment and environmental problems. The question is whether the formal education system has responded well to this emerging concern. It is recognised that a great deal of environmental learning takes place outside the formal education process and the best locations and opportunities for environmental education are found in the community. The focus of this paper is to evaluate the state of environmental education in the school system and to identify areas of curriculum needs which can help us develop a more meaningful environmental education programme. The existing curriculum activities for environmental education for primary and secondary levels are briefly reviewed and some observations are made regarding the implementation of environmental education by teachers. The infusion of elements of environmental education into the different disciplines particularly into the science subjects can be described as incidental. The findings of three research studies are elaborated to provide some objective evidence about student learnings about environment as well as perceptions of science teachers about the social relevance of the science curricula. Ba$ed on these findings some constraints to the development of environmental education are inferred. Five curriculum issues representing the areas of need for environmental education in school are selected for discussion and these include: nature of environmental education, selection of content, curriculum design strategies, teaching-learning methodologies and evaluation. The discussion highlights the need to have a clear conceptualisation of the nature and goals of environmental education and their implications for the process of developing environmental education includes 'what it is, how do we select the content for it, how do we organise the content, what are the appropriate teaching methodologies how do we assess its learnings