Children require early environmental education

Children require early environmental education

Wuryadi, Yogyakarta

Ahmad Bukhori's article in The Jakarta Post, on Jan. 22,
Raising Environmental Awareness in Children, provides the
fundamentals of environmental education in general.

There are some important points in his piece: First
environmental awareness should be developed to enable children to
develop environmentally sensitive behavior.

Second, basic environmental knowledge should be introduced
early by giving them interesting experiences in their own local
environment.

Third, the most accountable parties for developing
environmental awareness among children are parents, social
organizations and schools.

Fourth, we, as children's primary role models, must be
consistent in how we treat nature.

I'd like to give some complementary concepts to Ahmad
Bukhori's thoughts, not only to support his ideas but also to
demand that the accountable parties develop a comprehensive
concept for environmental education.

Education for developing sensitive behavior toward the
environment is a very fundamental concept in environmental
education, and a very important paradigm in effective education.

Sensitive behavior is usually developed by a series of
meaningful experiences, either real or programed. Such
sensitivity among the people of Simeuleu island toward the
tsunami was developed by real meaningful experiences, hence they
were already familiar with the tsunami phenomena following an
earthquake.

In normal education such experiences can be programmed in
formal or informal education, by using a deductive method of
education. Small things or simple things in the form of
experiences should be organized or programmed to have a
meaningful learning target.

Basic environmental knowledge already exists in the local
environment, but in the form of unorganized facts or phenomena.
Educators should utilize the environmental facts by organizing
the facts to become interesting experiences for the children. But
how to introduce these to children?

The most responsible educators are parents, and they should
start with simple and small things related to their children's
living environment. Parents should show their children how to
properly dispose of garbage so as not to block the rivers for
instance.

The other small things to do is to turn off lights or
electrical appliances when they leave the room, and how to use
water properly and efficiently. The children should know the very
simple relationship between rain, deforestation and floods. All
these are about nature and its relationship with human life, as
basic environmental knowledge within their local environment.

The pre-school age is very sensitive, and things perceived at
this age will have a long-term impact on their life afterward.
Environmental awareness developed by direct positive experiences
will have a significant contribution to their attitude, ethics
and moral responsibility toward the environment.

Respect for the environment will develop ethics and a moral
foundation for the nation to support Indonesia's sustainable
development in the future.

The three centers of education -- parents, social
organizations/non-governmental organizations, and schools --
should have a functional relationship to develop a fair and
effective education. This functional relationship could be used
to develop environmental awareness in young children.

Real education should start within the family, and the parents
will shoulder most of the responsibility until the very early
education. If the parents fail to develop the basis for
environmental education in their children, the schools and
organizations cannot do much. But most parents are not aware of
this responsibility and almost all of them have the perception
that education should start in the school.

Unfortunately not all children have the opportunity to go to
school, either because of economic considerations or intellectual
limitations. Each school has its own system for selection, and
both limitations have a significant role. So there will be no
schooling for the poor and intellectually challenged children in
our current educational system.

Who will be responsible for this? No schooling is not
necessarily no education. Parents and society will educate them
but in a very random setting and they will be exposed to positive
and negative risks. If negative risks occur, then there will be a
national disaster of greater proportions than the tsunami,
because the cycles of intellectual deficiency and poverty will
cause a moral destruction of the nation. No more national
identity, no more national spirit, and no more Indonesia.

We as adults, as parents, teachers or leaders in the society,
should consistently treat the environment in a proper way. The
children will take us as their reference point in their decision
making. If we exploit the environment to a level beyond its
capacity, the children will do the same.

Adult education for parents, teachers, social leaders,
government officials, has the same importance as early childhood
education. There must be adult education before they educate
their children directly or indirectly.

Prof. Dr. Wuryadi is a lecturer at the Yogyakarta State
University, Yogyakarta. He can be reached at wuryadi-
uny@telkom.net

wuryadi-uny@telkom.net