Environmental Awareness in Children

ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS IN EDUCATION

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
- William Blake

Children and Nature are integral to each other. Our children should learn to see and appreciate the harmony in creation. Living in harmony with creation and all creatures, ancient man discovered a unity with this wonderful world. It is only Man who maintains or mars the harmony in creation. All other natural things function according to the laws of Nature, be it celestial bodies, animals, plants, even micro-organisms. Every child needs to be inspired to resolve to never do anything that defiles Nature and thereby the harmony in creation. This brings about a great need to create Environmental Awareness among children.

Why is there an urgent need for Environmental Awareness? It is because our modern industrial society has embarked on a course that is suicidal. We must change our attitude to Nature or we will eliminate life from this planet. We are demolishing, poisoning and destroying all life systems on this planet. We essentially measure progress only in terms of money or convenience. It is fundamentally a philosophical and ideological problem, rather than a technical one. The world and its environment is not being destroyed by evil people. If that were the case, it would be easier to solve this problem by having more laws and law-enforcement agencies. According to Jose Lutzenberg, “Most environmental damage today is caused by good people with good intentions, but they are acting on the basis of a mistaken world view and as long as they stick to that view, they will continue to destroy this planet....” Only when we learn to look at the world in a more holistic way, one that sees ourselves as only one species among millions, where even the smallest bacterium is important for the well-being of the whole organism, only then can we have a more technologically advanced society that is sustainable, and will enhance life instead of demolishing it.

There can be many approaches to creating this Awareness. The components can be:
Approach: Oneness in creation, harmony in Nature, respect for all life, God as the creator and universal force and presence. Children should be led from their earliest years to view God as the creator, sustainer and maintainer of Nature. They should be taught to understand the omni-present nature of God which instills in them the fear and reverence of not doing harmful things to His creation. A need has to be created in children to cherish and protect Nature. Without developing such an emotional bond with Nature, the scientific aspects of environment and related advice will not be imbibed by the children. Where there is love, caring and compassion is spontaneous.

Rabindranath Tagore, the brilliant and prolific poet, writer and nationalist, founded Shantiniketan in 1901. It is a school where even today, classes are held outdoors under the open skies. He believed that children have an intimate relationship with the natural world. According to him, children should have contact with living nature, 'to meet with life where it is most supreme'. He said, “From our childhood, habits are formed and knowledge is imparted in such a manner that our life is weaned away from nature and our mind and the world are set in opposition from the beginning of our days. Thus the greatest of education for which we came prepared is neglected, and we are made to lose our world to find a bagful of information instead. We rob the child of his earth to teach him geography, of language to teach him grammar.” Such profound words are meant to shake us into a realization that Nature and Environment need to be the basis and reason for education.
The role of educators is to bring out and nurture a child's talents and inner potential, their inner 'knowledge'. Nature serves as one of the best educators a child can ever have. And we, as co-educators, need to comprehend this relationship and make it an integral part of a child's curriculum.