Environmental Education Research, Vol. 12, Nos. 34, JulySeptember 2006, pp.

247264

Environment and education: a view of a changing scene

Reprinted from Environmental Education on Research (2005) 1(1), pp. 320

John C. Smyth
President, Scottish Environmental Education Council, UK
Environmental 10.1080/13504620600942642 CEER_A_194180.sgm 1350-4662 Original Taylor 2006 000000JulySeptember 3-4 12 sally.smith@tandf.co.uk SallySmith and & Article Francis (print)/1469-5871 Francis Education Ltd 2006 Research (online)

This paper is an attempt to review the state of environmental education from the viewpoint of one involved in international and national strategies for its development. It relates environment and education to the whole system of human-environment relationships and sees environmental education not as a separable package but as a movement for fundamental educational reform, in a rapidly changing world under increasing strees both from human-induced change and from human nature itself. Environmental education has grown through the promotion of innovative educational approaches and the increasing attention given to human aspects of the system. Some of these, notably the idea of sustainability, need further development and careful use. Much work is needed to bring environmental and social systems together into a single conceptual structure, and to keep the development clear of misconceptions which are none of its making, to tackle the global issues that challenge survival and yet to remain realistic and practicable within the system in which it must work.

Environment and Education Once upon a time there was no difficulty about environmental education. For our hunter-gatherer ancestors learning must have been essentially a three-fold process: developing the physical and mental capacities to survive in the conditions of their homeland; acquiring the habits, customs and collective memories that would allow them to be contributing members of a family or tribal group; acquiring the knowledge, understanding and skills to maintain a relationship with their surroundings and win from them the resources needed to lead a biologically sufficient life. Competence as an individual, as a member of a society, and as a dependent part of an ecological system were the ultimate objectives of learning, and success was measured by survival. Since then the course of human history has been one of increasing capacities to modify and control the environment, to manipulate its resources and to move into
ISSN 1350-4622 (print)/ISSN 1469-5871 (online)/06/03/4024718 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13504620600942642

248 J. C. Smyth new lands at the expense of weaker peoples when resources became insufficient to satisfy appetites. Personal and social competence remained as main objectives of education in support of this progress. They dealt with systems which have limits and constraints close enough for the effects of incompetence to be felt quite quickly. As civilisation grew away from its roots, however, the environment increasingly came to be treated as unlimited space with ample resources for those with the power and skills to acquire them. Knowledge of the distribution and exploitation of resources was not balanced by understanding of how the system that supplied them worked. Feed-back loops which should have signalled danger were misunderstood, designed out or disregarded. In the latter half of this century the explosive growth of human populations and the impacts of modern technology have been such that limits to growth and the penalties of profligate management have become familiar issues. Photographs of our planet suspended in space gave the public in the 1960s and 1970s a powerful visual image of finite resources. Environmental education emerged as part of the response to these perceptions. We have the authority of the chairman of MORI (Worcester, 1994) that in the 1990s public interest in environmental issues remains very high and widespread through society. The time should be ripe for the environment to recover its place in education. The educational response has indeed grown and developed but the rate of environmental change is growing faster, while some aspects of education are very resistant to change. Perhaps we have done our enterprise an injustice by packaging it as environmental education, comparable with and separable from many other educational packages. What we are really seeking now is to reform Education. In a recent review Chris Maas Geesteranus (1994) asked Why do we still have to talk about environmental education: why did we not succeed in making its name redundant? People still depend for their lives on themselves, on other human beings, and on the extended environment in which they live. Education still has the job of preparing them and each part continues to be vital: there should be no difficulty about what to do. Defining the Environment Part of the problem may lie in definitions. In spite of all that has been written in recent years there is still widespread confusion about what environment means. To many people, both government and public, the environment continues to be essentially green. Further, the word implies something secondary to what it surrounds, and less important, even although we depend on it totally, every moment of our lives, and continually change it just by living. It is therefore constantly necessary to remind people that our environment is the totality of what we live in, natural or constructed, spatial, social and temporal. It is an extension of ourselves, its health requiring the same care as our own health. Because we share it with other people its care is a shared responsibility. The parts that are familiar and significant to us connect by many complex links to unfamiliar systems, and to a global environment which includes the significant worlds of people and other

Environmental and education 249 organisms unknown. The concept of each individual organism and its environment as an integral system constituting a single ecological unit (the fundamental particle of ecology) was explored by Patten (1982). Without pursuing it in the detail that he did this concept still offers educators a challenging and potentially fruitful way of relating people and their environment to each other. In such a system the organism is not a passive receiver and recorder of external environmental signals. The French physiologist of the last century, Claude Barnard, had a dictum that we live in two environments not onethe external and also the internal one (see also Smyth, 1977). Some ecologists (for example, Dansereau, 1975) have acknowledged this by adopting the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins word inscape. Our perceptions of our external environment (the landscape) are always modified by our internal environment of needs and appetites, memories and visions; both our perceptions and our responses to it are selected and interpreted under their influence (the inscape). Our inscape is thus different from both the landscape around us and the inscapes of others, yet this is the environment to which our own behaviour is responding. Work is necessary to bring them into a relationship, varying in degree with the distances apart. This leads to a duty of education, to develop a critical approach to what is communicated to us by others and also to what we perceive for ourselves, an aspect of education which is underdeveloped (see, for example, Blakemore, 1990). Individual systems are of course components of a hierarchy of larger systems, culminating in the biosphere itself. Large complex systems, held together by many kinds of links and processes, present another learning challenge. Haber (1992) quotes evidence that the average human brain, if not specially trained, will not grasp systems composed of more than eight elements. Many of the ecosystem models or schemes published in textbooks and even reports to laymen contain more than eight elements. There is thus a strong temptation, in education, public information and even in policy-making involving scientists, to over-simplify positions, to employ linear thinking and to seek causal interpretations. As Haber says this leads to split images about environmental realitya background picture of some simple harmony, which of course is grossly perturbed at the moment, and awareness of impending disasters. He adds: At the same time people believe that disasters will hit others first. This is perhaps the only hint of recognising complexity, and may be used for educating people in true ecological thinking. Further difficulties are imposed on educators, however, by the disciplinary structure of most post-primary formal education. The reductionist approach in science which has served us well, and will continue so to do, is not a good preparation for systemic approaches of this sort. An analysis of the detrimental effects on the development of environmental literary of thinking within imposed frameworks of ideas is given by Brennan (1994), with suggestions as to how better approaches might be developed. We are all aware, however, of the prestige associated with established disciplines, and the territorial and administrative challenges of interdisciplinary programmes. The all-too-common temptation to side-step them by leaving interdisciplinary integration to the student (unrealistic), or passing responsibility to the

250 J. C. Smyth informal sector (dismissive), must be resisted if the status of holistic environmental education is to be maintained. How do the approaches of people towards this quite complex concept need to be improved? Several terms are used to refer to the objectives of environmental education which can be arranged as stages in its progress (SOEnD, 1993). Environmental awareness, the watchword of the earlier years, is that process of alerting people to the multiplicity of factors which influence their environment, the first step towards the systemic way of thinking. Environmental literacy is built on awareness by the acquisition of greater knowledge and understanding of the components of the system, the links between them and the dynamics of the system. Environmental responsibility recognises the special role of humankind in determining and guiding change, and the capacity to evaluate between different options. Environmental competence implies a degree of mastery of the system, not only to understand and to evaluate it but to act effectively for its better functioning. Together they add up to environmental citizenship, a concept of participating membership in the system recently discussed by Spedding in his Presidential address to the UK Institute of Biology (1994). How can we promote these qualities? Fitting in Education If we try to treat the environment holistically we must do the same for education. Formal education in schools and further and higher institutions, carried out by identifiable people trained for the purpose, is important, and often sets the standards by which education is defined and judged. However, people also learn how to behave towards their environment in their homes and communities, during leisure activities, in the workplace, and from relatives, peer-groups, cultural influences, the mass media, advertising and the public example set by those in authority (as well as from legislative and fiscal measures). Different influences predominate at different times of life and in different circumstances: collectively they are a sustained and lifelong learning experience. These other parts of the learning experience happen whether we intervene or not; they also should be guided towards better human-environmental relationships. Where a learning experience can be guided this may be fairly described as education, be it formal, informal or non-formal. By that argument everyone becomes a potential educator whether by precept or example. This holistic view of education was largely adopted by UNCED (1992) in Agenda 21, and developed, for example, in the national strategy recently proposed in Scotland (SOEnD, 1993). Agenda 21 signals the need for a clear lead from the top and for facilitation of collaboration between the main sectoral interests concerned, in national and local government, government agencies, formal education, the business sector, cultural, community and youth organisations and the voluntary sector. All of these are concerned in different ways with direct educational activity and services, whether formal or informal, with staff training and with exemplary environmental practice and there is an often unrealised potential for collaborative programmes.

Environmental and education 251 The holistic approach will not be complete until education has its place in the whole system of environmental care. The development of behaviour towards the environment is an integral part of the dynamics of any ecosystem in which young animals grow up, but is especially sensitive here because of the wide disparity between the speed of human adaptability and the slow adaptive processes of natural biological systemshence the need for planned environmental education. This close relationship is not always recognised, however, by those in charge of environmental care, who are apt to acknowledge the importance of education and then pass on responsibility to others. Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 (the main education chapter) received virtually no comment during its passage through the UN systemit was a worthy cause for other people to take upand the response of the international community to education has not yet been nearly enough, in spite of strategy development for environmental education in a growing number of countries. A much higher priority for education remains an urgent issue, on a wider front, supported by transfer of funding from more trivial purposes to something on which the success of other, grander programmes may eventually depend. But, in the present state of the human environment, we cannot afford to wait for that to happen. The Seventh Enemy The concerns that led to the birth of environmental education and to the Earth Summit in 1992 are the outcome of multiple demographic and resource distribution changes associated with rapid technological development. Inventories of the resultant damage are numerous, the front-runner at present being Agenda 21. Their content, however, follows a familiar pattern: for example, it is nearly 20 years since Higgins (1975), in a contribution to The Observer Magazine, listed seven enemies of mankind: six were population explosion, food shortages, other resource scarcities, environmental degradation, misuse of nuclear capacities and uncontrolled technology. The seventh enemy was the nature of humankind itself, and he was pessimistic. Unfortuantely human misbehaviour on a grand scale as the root cause of global problems can be a delicate issue to take up in both policy formulation and education: yet it is precisely this particular enemy against which educators are drawn. About the same time the father of ethology, Konrad Lorenz (1974), covered related ground in identifying Civilized Mans Eight Deadly Sins looking (naturally) more closely at implications for behaviour. Among these he noted a human race against itself in which human-induced change, having long since outrun the adaptive capacities of the natural environment, is now outrunning human capacity to adapt, thus escaping the benefits of that other human capacity for reflection. He saw also breaks with tradition, as the speed of change alienated the young from the old, and increasing indoctrinability coupled with de-individualising effects linked to commercial pressures and the moulding of mass public opinion. Other writers have deplored similar adverse influences in the spread of urban environments made of uniform buildings, often unrelieved even by services, in human terms the antithesis of biodiversity, and in the loss of local distinctiveness in both the

252 J. C. Smyth built and non-built landscape. An uneasy comparison can be made between human environments and natural ecosystems when under stress. For example, stress conditions tend to favour opportunists, out to make a quick profit and move on, as against long-term residents preparing to be succeeded by future generations. Opportunists often become wreckers, in the way of progress, and are to be found everywhere from street corners to the highest corridors of power. Stress effects are also to be found in the loss of information content through the transience of buildings and artefacts, the loss of diversity, the loss of traditional control systems, and in uncaring attitudes to all but the short-term present, associated with loss of contact with the past, intolerance of differences (age, ethnic, occupational) and lack of confidence in the future (Smyth & Stapp, 1993). These are features of life easily recognisable in industrialised countries which already have a disproportionate share of the worlds wealth. Developing countries are in addition trying to handle an urban revolution and the technological products and practices of alien cultures without relevant experience or training, without the necessary resources, and at the expense of their own cultural heritage, while most of the benefits drain away to more affluent societies. Opportunistic exploiters from outside can make easy profits in these conditions and can establish considerable freedom from any effective control. Adding insult to injury the affluent countries are apt to maintain a certain hegemony over solutions to environmental problems. They are not generally willing to recognise that different cultural solutions may be valid for the same problem, whether in their educational services or through funding. Television is a further significant feature of the modern environment, and an agent of change which is being vigorously exported from the affluent to less affluent societies. It offers people a shadow environment selected and sustained by a culture of over-consumption and over-indulgence which is often foreign to its viewers. While it also has great potential for good one must assess it on its greatest influence, in the certainty that it will continue to grow. This is no more than a sketch of the human environment, to set alongsideor on top ofthe environment as we have been more accustomed to think of it. When Vernadsky (1986) introduced the word biosphere in 1926 he offered a concept of a unitary global, self-regulating system. The self-regulating aspect was developed by Lovelock (1979) who gave it a catchy name Gaia, which made the concept familiar and set off many imaginations on much less scientific flights than his own. Humankind has become a major component of this system even to the point of converting it from an autotrophic to a heterotrophic system (through the use of fossil fuels) and has raised speculation on how self-regulation will proceed. This human-dominated system is now on the way to replacing much of biological diversity with human cultural diversity (Jacobs, 1975). Unfortunately this is a more labile and fragile form of diversity, and those who look after the environment very often have little idea of how to deal with the human element. Likewise, those who are concerned primarily with human societies may know little of the ecological constraints within which they operate. It is a gap which education must bridge, but current structures and outlooks seem to make this difficult to do.

Environmental and education 253 Education Responding For many people the original motivation for environmental education was the desire to protect or conserve the natural environment from human threats. The first international definition (although more comprehensive in its form and intention) was adopted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN, 1971) now the World Conservation Union. For many people nature conservation is still the motivation, perhaps developed from an association with childhood experiences and aesthetic pleasure which others have described as a wish to recreate the Garden of Eden. As Holdgate (1994) has pointed out, this may have been a disadvantage in a society where jobs are easily presented as more important than rare flowers. Yet affective learning in early childhood may be the necessary basis on which to build more complex ideas, an approach pursued by Van Matre (1979) over many years. It continues to be important in later education e.g. through planned opportunities for field experience at a range of levels and in contrasting situations, as an integral part of all formal education, not as an optional frill. It is also an important aspect of informal education and of recreational activity. The pressure for environmental education was much extended in 1972 by the call of the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm for an international programme in environmental education, inter-disciplinary in approach, in schools and out of schools, encompassing all levels of education and directed towards the general public. In 1975 its main characteristics were set out in the Belgrade Charter (UNESCO, 1977) adopted and reinforced at the Tbilisi and Moscow Conferences (UNESCO/UNEP, 1978, 1987). Discussion of the sequence of events which have led to our present models of environmental education are to be found in Wheeler (1985), Sterling (1992), Tilbury (1994) and others. The nature of environmental education and how it is approached in practice soon grew to differ from more traditional approaches to education. Certain words and phrases now recur so often that they can be used as descriptors. The following illustrative list appears as an annexe of the Scottish strategy document (SOEnD, 1993) based on earlier compilations:
Lifelong Systemic rather than linear thinking Interdisciplinary Affective integrated with cognitive Holistic Flexible and adaptable Learner-centred Forward-looking, anticipatory Locally relevant Interpretative, synthetic, broadening Concentric, from local to global Operating in open situations Emphasis on quality and value Issue-based Problem formulating Field-based Normative rather than empirical Action-orientated Exemplary (for example with reference to the quality of the learning environment)

These terms reflected international recommendations on the reform of education in general (see, for example, Botkin et al., 1979) and gave environmental education an attraction to reformers of education whose priorities were not necessarily environmental.

254 J. C. Smyth The character of environmental education was already associated with environmental problems, especially as our need to solve them often supplied the arguments for financial support. Many caught public attention with the help of easily absorbed titles acid rain, greenhouse effect, ozone hole, and of course pollutionwhich led people to think they understood them. Because they are complex issues and their nature subject to continuing scientific development, something which the public and the media do not seem always to appreciate, they have led to differences between environmental educators, who must try to make sense of public issues, and scientists deploring oversimplification and hasty judgements. Further, the topics which have gained these titles are not a fair cross-section of current maladjustments in human-environment relations, so an approach based on such topical problems can have disadvantages. It may in any case be counterproductive to present the environment to people and especially children as a world of problems. The position of normality should be a state of health, analogous to bodily health, in which the problems are injuries, diseases or maladjustments to be attacked and remedied. This approach is now being recognised, but inevitably it requires simplification, something which can only be done successfully from a high level of understanding of how the healthy system is constituted, and therefore requires that scientists and educators should work more closely together to produce acceptable interpretations. The Sustainability Vision An important step in the development of ideas was the World Conservation Strategy (IUCN et al., 1980). It was based on three requirementsthe maintenance of lifesupport systems, the preservation of genetic diversity (extending to species and habitat diversity, i.e. biodiversity) and the sustainable use of natural resources. It called for environmental education and for increased participation by people in the management of their own environments. Perhaps its most far reaching achievements were its proactive approach to the environment, aiming to prevent problems arising rather than cleaning up afterwards, and its adoption of humankind into the system it set out to conserve, through the concept of sustainable development. Both of these represented progress in environmental thinking, with implications for education. The proactive approach favours a positive health rather than problem-orientated view of the environment. Sustainable development has underpinned the holistic approach, given educators an objective, and endorsed the growing involvement of social scientists in environmental education. Is it a clear objective? The broad intentions of sustainable development have been made internationally familiar through the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, the Brundtland Commission (1987), UNCED (1992) and many other publications. Yet the expression is essentially a coded onethe dictionary meanings of the words do not necessarily add up to the meaning understoodand it has led to many arguments. The principle is an ethical one, the assurance of inter-generational equity, which has to be interpreted globally, not just locally, but it becomes difficult when applied to particular circumstances. It is a

Environmental and education 255 successful means of encouraging people to think positively about vital issues, but without access to a good, reliable repertoire of illustrative case histories life for the educator can become difficult, and there is a dearth of suitable material. If sustainable development is to be regarded as code, the word sustainability, unqualified on its own, is even more so. Its use has provoked objections from policy makers in both industrialised and developing countries who suspect that it represents a green attempt to get away from development, or that it disguises what is to be sustained, namely a northern affluent lifestyle. In Caring for the Earth, IUCN et al. (1991) discussed the use of the term and built a strategy around nine principles of sustainable living. Helpful as these are they still pose difficulty for an unsupported educator trying to apply them to a local issue. Further, committing ones policy to a term the meaning of which is not clear to all, invites confusion by those who interpret it differently either by fault or intention. One must expect, however, that these terms are here to stay. For many people they counteract prevailing emphasis on material growth and consumption, about which they have become rightly anxious. Sustainable development is popular with governments and industrialists because it retains the principle of development, and with developing countries where it is seen to offer hope for a better share of the worlds wealth. Sustainability, now espoused by many reputable bodies (e.g. WWF and other major conservation organisations), is also a comforting word with a sense of continuity in a world of threatening change. As a leading theme for environmental education these concepts even tend to overshadow the other two main planks of the World Conservation Strategy from which they sprangthe maintenance of ecological life-support systems and of biodiversity. Since critical factors in maintaining sustainable development cannot be less important than the objective itself this is a tendency to be guarded against. In 1989 Pezzey wrote recent writing on sustainability shows that there is no general agreement on exactly what sustainability means. This fuzziness is useful in forging a consensus to promote sustainable development but it also obscures the political, philosophical and technical issues that still remain unresolved . Much more writing since then has still not made it a more secure platform for educators. These terms are in danger of becoming the property of a priesthood of the environmentally enlightened presented as symbols of goodness to be enshrined, not explained, and taken up without question by many who, for political or commercial reasons, just want to look good. When qualified by ecological or environmental sustainability may mean more, but educators, when they use the word, should be sure in their own minds that they know what they are saying, and that others do as well. There are people around who welcome a lack of clarity about the implications of a globally sustainable life-style, and who should not be encouraged. Valuing People Humankind is now a dominant influence on our environment and what people do will determine whether or not the system can be sustained. What they do is likely to be

256 J. C. Smyth based on what will provide them and their families with security, short or long-term (Davis, 1993). For some it is the most basic of securities, such as food, water, sanitation, freedom from violence. For others it is more sophisticated: people can usually add to what they think they need. Whatever they may be education must penetrate prevailing attitudes. In some countries at least it should lead to the combination of environment and development education from separate entities. Environmental and development educators, however, may come from different disciplinary backgrounds with different motivations, see the same environment through different frames of reference, and apply quite different priorities. Combining their programmes will need effort, particularly in training and in the provision of materials. It will also take time. Obviously this issue hinges on what people value. Values education is a relatively new and growing element in education: resolving differences between what people need, what they want, and what their resource base can provide without jeopardising the future, falls within its scope. Much is now being written and developed under this heading which is important for environmental education, where the establishment of environmentally sound values is a key factor for success. It is important that environmental values are recognised and built into this development, and environmental educators have an important role to play in ensuring that this is so (for reviews see Caduto, 1985; Berry 1993; Sterling, 1993). They call for the support and understanding of environmental researchers to whom the need may be less apparent but whose expertise must underpin many value judgements. It may be, as Robin GroveWhite has recently suggested (1994), that the new values which develop may well turn out to be rather old valuesechoing classical philosophical and religious conceptions of human interdependency, of the limits of human capability, and of humankinds place in the scheme of things. Nevertheless they have serious and practical implications for education at personal, community and political levels (see, for example, Fien, 1993). At UNCED, and in other recent international meetings, there has been much greater emphasis on particular categories of people who in the past have been undervalued. Women, as the first educators of children and in many places the main direct impacters on the environment, are still deprived of education in many countries: there is now strong pressure to rectify this. In developed countries feminists are now working to provide new and stimulating perspectives on environmental education which are claimed (Di Chiro, 1987) to offer a more complete analysis of environmental problems and therefore a better understanding of their potential solutions. Indigenous peoples, with their traditional knowledge and experience, are being recognised (sometimes too late) as a unique source for better understanding. The deprived populations of burgeoning cities, and ecological refugees in many circumstances, are rapidly growing educational targets. This variety underlines the futility of treating environmental education as uniform: it must be as variable as the people and environments that it addresses, and we have far to go in developing the requisite repertoire of methods and approaches. To different degrees we may expect these developments to alter concepts and balances in environmental education in coming years.

Environmental and education 257 The World Conservation Strategy (IUCN et al., 1980) advocated participation in environmental action as an educational strategy for achieving its aims, a word which is now frequently strengthened to empowerment. More attention is now being paid to community education as a vehicle of environmental education and to community development methods as part of the experience to be acquired by environmental managers. In spite of the extent to which they interact with the human community the staff of environmental bodies are still often largely untrained in how to do it. Participative methods are also increasingly advocated in formal education, so environmental education could again be additionally attractive as a vehicle for educational reform. There are difficulties of course: giving power to people means that someone else has to yield it up. A recent attempt to highlight changes in the approach to environmental education associated with the new emphasis on people in the system has been made by Breiting (1993) who returns to the method of comparing older and newer characteristics. He replaces the goal of changing behaviour with action qualification and characteristics which he lists under the New Generation of Environmental Education include all people being involved in solutions (not just environmentalists and educators), emphasising harmony with our descendants (rather than with nature), ethics relating to behaviour between people (rather than environmental ethics), the social sciences and humanities as the main subject matter (rather than natural sciences), community experience as central (rather than nature experience), sustainable use as a man-created measurement (rather than nature-created), emphasis on equality between people (no such emphasis). Such an analysis depends on familiar and readily understandable qualities, recognises that only people can effect the changes in their relationship with their environment, that knowing does not mean doing, and that doing is likely to be most influenced by what other people do. It leaves questions as to how the ecological constraints will be incorporated. It could also give further ammunition to those who say that by the time actions are sorted out, understood and agreed on there will be nothing left to look after. Nevertheless it focuses attention on vital parts of the system which have been fatally ignored in the past. People and Paradigms How educators perceive the needs for environmental education and how they respond are filtered, like anything else, through their own attitudes, experience and capacities. Because of its breadth environmental educators already come from a very wide range of backgrounds in the sciences, humanities and arts, from formal and informal education, from government agencies, industrial training and voluntary bodies, and with priorities ranging through nature protection, cherished landscapes, stately homes, urban planning, public health, inner city deprivation, educational reform, planned parenthood and many more. They may come with their own jargons to explain their policies, backed by their own researchers, thus extending to another level the framework thinking criticised by Brennan (1994) and already noted.

258 J. C. Smyth Inevitably there are tensions between environmental qualities and human qualities as main objectives of education, between natural and social sciences, between quantitative and qualitative methods of assessment, the (presumed) objective language of data and the subjective language of values, between extreme ecocentrics who treat humankind as one, potentially expendable, component in the biosphere, to extreme anthropocentrics who suspect ecological factors of being devices for the denial of human rights. Within this spectrum research and development tend to cluster around three focal approaches emphasising respectively the physical components of the environment and corresponding human needs and issues, the mental constructs of the environment on the basis of which people behave, and the social, cultural and ideological environments within which human behaviour is moulded. They reflect the separate attitudes of natural and social scientists, but, in view of the relevance to each other of the systems they represent, it is important that their exponents should accept in principle that they all have valid contributions to make to the development of a wide and varied educational strategy essential to what is being attempted. These issues and their applications to the design and practice of environmental education, are explored and discussed in a large and growing body of literature, American, Australian, European and others, beyond the scope of this paper to review. Research and development must be seen in their wider context. Environmental education from whatever angle it is approached is a learning process within and between several sets of players. However they are categorised the categories overlap. They all learn from each other and can be arranged as a learning web. For the present we might identify three main categories: the people who promote and support environmental education (eg. administrators, environmentalists, curriculum developers, training managers, community organisations, local activists); environmental educators, professional or amateur, in formal or informal programmes, full-time or part-time, as a distinct activity or as a dimension of something else, together with their back-up of researchers and developers; those whose learning is being targeted, who for practical purposes are almost indefinitely sub-divisible, but who collectively add up to the whole population with all the social and cultural influences to which it is subjected. Each group is vital to the achievement of objectives, however they have been defined. Such a web, applied to a more specific, more localised situation, can help to identify gaps in an educational strategy which recognises the holistic nature of environment and education. What is actually done in any particular circumstances will of course also depend on its nature and on the circumstances; every kind of valid approach should have its place somewhere. The above groups are likely to differ in many ways, for example in their priorities and expectations. The promoters priorities are most often environmental and their expectations are for improved behaviour by target groups towards the environment (sometimes in an unreasonably short time). The educators priorities and expectations,

Environmental and education 259 especially if they are professionals in the formal sector, may be more human-centred relating to personal and social development of their students. Target groups are obviously the most difficult about which to generalise: many would agree with Davis (1993) that their most basic priority is security and that they expect education to increase it by cultivating around them whatever environmental qualities they associate with security. These priorities and expectations can be brought together if they are recognised and attended to; they need to be if environmental education is to be fully effective. Saving the Earth Nobody expects education to do it single-handedly, but the expectations generated by major international events such as the Earth Summit at Rio, and the anxieties incurred by well-publicised disasters such as Bhopal and Chernobyl or by the unpredicted effects of pollutants such as CFCs and oestrogenic chemicals, have raised the level of demand for action. Those struggling to meet demands may be forgiven for looking at environmental education, as a contributor to solutions, with some concern over the medley of different stake-holders, the uncertain relationships with the formal education establishment, and the rather slow appearance of attributable effects. The medley, however, is a sign of diversity and, properly organised would be a source of strength; the formal sector is beginning to respond; and results may not be so slow if, for example, we recognise the value of children as educators, work through community development, gain support from the media (in which the local are more co-operative than the national), and demonstrate to decision-makers that these are matters of concern to voters, customers and shareholders who may look further ahead than is sometimes assumed. In making the case to those who administer education there are obstacles to be overcome. Haber (1992), from his experience as an ecologist advising government departments on environmental policy, identified seven areas of difficulty which colour the thoughts of unconverted administrators and readily transfer to the promotion of environmental education. Doomsday or chaos prophecy, referring to the apocalyptic approach to the environmental future beloved of the media, often disregarding the natural protective and regulative processes in which support should be invested. The simplicity-complexity dilemma, which has become pressing as a result of mandatory environmental impact assessments falling down on failures of understanding between professionals and laymen. Ecological fundamentalism, characteristic of environmental pressure groups rather than ecologists, the green opportunists of the stressed system, growing in power but sometimes associated with poorly designed or targeted action. The value problem, reflecting mismatches between ecologically desirable policies and the value systems into which they must become integrated to succeed in practice.

260 J. C. Smyth The scale problem, referring to the extreme difficulty which people have in moving from space and timescales familiar in everyday life to those relevant to many environmental issues. The legislative maze which gives problems to those professionally charged with putting environmental policy into practice, let alone the committed public who want to do something. Dissension among ecologists, including for example the holism-reductionism dissension or experimental as against modelling approaches to study, which give difficulty through the failure of non-scientists to understand how science progresses (see Blakemore, 1990). Although these difficulties are stated in ecological terms they have their close counterparts in the social sciences. Collectively they blur the intentions of environmental education and have to be addressed for example by protective measures in both the delivery of ideas and their management in education. Worcester (1994) in an analysis for a World Environment Day symposium, identified some rather similar reasons for a decline in public interest in the environment. His choices were the distracting influence of green politics which have been divisive when what was needed was comprehensive; preoccupation with social issues perceived as more immediate; boredom among editorial staff of the main media; public confusion about whose word to trust; failure to focus adequately on problems and solutions; the use of environmental issues as political footballs; the tendency of environmental organisations to compete rather than complement. Making the case globally may also encounter difficulties especially among the growing company of environmental educators in developing countries some of whom have been making progress that might be envied in Europe, with very limited resources. To acquire global credibility in the wake of Agenda 21, we should be able to answer questions about what we are doing to prepare people educationally for (among other issues): The number of people already in the world, their changing distribution, continuing population growth and related problems of poverty and deprivation, disturbed behaviour, civil disruption and disease. The diversion of resources from richer to poorer countries, addressing the causes of poverty rather than its consequences, giving self-sufficiency a priority over the export of luxury consumer goods. The promotion of life-styles which are valuable to others, satisfying in themselves, but dependent on neither high levels of consumption nor environmental degradation. The treatment of wreckers (already noted) who for reasons such as personal power, political or commercial advantage, misplaced idealism or simple survival resist measures for sustainable living (bearing in mind that some have enormous resources to support them, some believe that what they are doing is also best for the world, many just do not think about it and some cannot afford to).

Environmental and education 261 The effects of the media, especially television, as the main source of environmental information for many, and the main illustrator of what life should be like in the world, as its producers and backers see it. The loss through civilisation of negative feedback loops, that would otherwise help to control levels of demand and supply of resources, and the lack of effective substitutes for them. This list could go on. I have suggested elsewhere (Smyth, 1994) that environmental educators, awed by the size of these problems, may be too ready to retreat to more comfortable ideas and activities. Issues like these also pose challenges to the democratic process, which is likely to have difficulties with measures that are perceived to deny peoples expectations or lower the standard of living. People can survive and cultures even strengthen, under such conditions when they are imposed by war or catastrophe; but willingly? How does one make self-denial and economy of resource use macho? Is there a chance of a feminist solution? Can we completely re-define prosperity in terms which the earth can afford?

An Agenda for Progress This review does not attempt to provide answers, only to suggest some of the important items which will have to be on the agenda for the next stage of progress. Our solutions will have to be supportive of practitioners, but also practicable for administrators and credible for the world. The viewpoint is inevitably that of a biologist, and of one concerned in the development of strategies rather than the design of methodologies. This is not greatly different, however, from the viewpoints of those not primarily educators who have to put environmental education into its place in the system. Surveying the widening involvement in environmental education one detects also an increasing lack of consensus. Defining the issues and relating them to each other seems to need a new foundation statement for environmental educators in the widest sense, in language straightforward enough to be understood by all the players, of what kind of human-environment system we are trying to reach. It must combine into one system the ecological and the human dimensions, and how they can be adjusted to each other, to provide instruments for helping the system to reach a more stable state. It should be capable of development to provide educators with, for example, standards for which they can aim and indicators of success, and guide them to other more detailed sources of help vetted for accuracy, reliability and intelligibility. It should address plainly the threats to human security, local and global, of failure to progress, but still be positive in outlook. In doing this educators will be trying to bring together again the strands which were once part of a single structure but became unravelled at the end of the nineteenth century. In the second BES Lecture Holdgate (1994) described how a unifying theory of relationships, embracing religion and mythology as well as down-to-earth hunting rules and lore regarding food and medicinal plants bifurcated into scientific and political strands. They are now converging again in a synthesis of a wider range

262 J. C. Smyth of visions; myths and misunderstandings have been allowed to arise, partly because ecological scientists have remained in absorbed contemplation of nature while others have seized the political stage. We need to get back into the act. And so do educators. In so doing they may also forestall the use of environmental education as an instrument by people with somewhat different political agendas. Getting to this synthesis will require much new research and collaboration on a broader front than has been usual in the past. Much relevant work is being done by human ecologists, anthropologists, environmental psychologists, economists, philosophers and others, but it can be difficult to access from outside academic circles. A broader view of environmental education calls for increased interaction between sectorsnational and local government and government agencies, professional bodies, informal and vocational educators and trainers in the private sector and the formal system in all its variety, as called for in Agenda 21. In different ways this is needed at international, national and local levels. Many people agree that it needs a clear lead from the top, but it must also be sensitive and responsive to what is happening at community level and all support should be given to whatever mechanisms may be appropriate to give people at locality level a real voice in their future. This will call for a substantial outreach capacity in the mainline processes of environmental education but it should also enrich it by its enhanced capacity for exchange. Development on a broader front must allow for an even greater spread in outlooks and methods, but should not be over-prescriptive beyond agreement on the main goals, the relative strengths and capacities of the different sectors, and the value systems to which they subscribe. It should facilitate sharing of skills and resources and will considerably enhance bargaining strength. It depends to some degree on acceptance of the principles from which we started: that environmental education is an integral dimension of education; that it is about the whole environment, of which the human system is an integral and interdependent part; that education is itself a multifaceted component in the dynamics of the whole system, and should be a regular part of environmental planning and management; that the environment should likewise be an integral dimension in all education and training; that education does not yet prepare people well for large, complex systems and needs major adjustment accordingly. Looking over the landscape of environmental education I hope we are leaving behind the emphasis on environmental awareness, important as it is as the first step, and aiming for the later stages of environmental literacy, responsibility, competence and citizenship. I hope we have a more positive, less problem-dominated vision of the future. I hope as educators we have come to view knowledge less as prescriptive lists of topics and more as the necessary means for understanding, wise choices and effective action. I hope we have learned the importance of ethical and aesthetic qualities and the critical role of early affective learning. Having adopted humankind into

Environmental and education 263 the system I hope we can listen to it more carefully and be readier to work with other sectors than our own. We still have to work hard to bring human and ecological systems together, to practise systemic thinking and apply it much more widely in our affairs. We still have work to do to ensure that our own thinking is clear enough to stand up to the opposition it will encounter. A system of education designed to prepare a thoughtful and restrained community to play its part in an ecologically sustainable society may be another dream of a reconstructed Garden of Eden, but we need ideals to aim for. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that many have reached, that education should be largely recast. On the other hand we know that rapid change in a system produces stress, and that a stressed system is vulnerable to opportunists with very different agendas, hence the earlier use of the word circumspectly. We also know how incredibly adaptable humankind can be, and how quickly an idea can catch on when its time has come. Careful judgement will be needed, and the longer it is delayed the more difficult will it be to make real progress.

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