{"id":7350,"date":"2018-11-20T06:21:52","date_gmt":"2018-11-20T06:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7350"},"modified":"2018-11-21T14:35:49","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T14:35:49","slug":"when-was-there-a-golden-age-of-environmental-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2018\/11\/20\/when-was-there-a-golden-age-of-environmental-education\/","title":{"rendered":"When was there a golden age of environmental education?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taking this idea seriously for a minute, and only for the UK, a number of possibilities suggest themselves, and I am ignoring all pre-1960 initiatives that many, including Keith Wheeler in 1975 in Insights into Environmental Education,\u00a0<\/em>wrote about\u00a0...<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013 the 1960s<\/strong> which saw Silent Spring<\/em> and\u00a0the advent\u00a0(in 1968) of the Council for Environmental Education<\/em> [CEE] and the Society for Environmental Education [SEE] <\/em>(in 1969). \u00a0Neither survives.<\/p>\n

\u2013 the early 1970s<\/strong>\u00a0which saw the IUCN conference in Nevada, and when BEE was first published,\u00a0<\/em>the Schools Council set up\u00a0Project Environment,<\/em> and the National Rural Studies Association<\/em> was formed (later to become NAEE in 1972). \u00a0The last does survive.<\/p>\n

\u2013 the mid 1970s<\/strong> when, following the publication of the Club of Rome<\/em>\u00a0(in 1972) report (Limits to Growth),<\/em> university degrees in environmental subjects were launched along with GCE O and A level examination courses in environmental science and environmental studies. \u00a0The former persist but the latter are long gone which is a pity as some were commendably in-depth explorations of issues which are as pertinent today as then. \u00a0They were killed by the desire for uniformity in the national curriculum and by the shift to GCSE.<\/p>\n

\u2013 the late 1970s<\/strong> which saw DfE interest and serious engagement from HMI which produced its own environmental education curriculum reports which are useful documents today. \u00a0This was the time of the Tbilisi Declaration and great international interest in environmental education. \u00a0Although the DES published\u00a0Environmental Education in the UK as its contribution to Tbilisi,\u00a0<\/em>mainstream schooling remained largely unaffected.<\/p>\n

\u2013 the late 1980s<\/strong> and the first Great Debate<\/em> about the curriculum. \u00a0Sadly, environmental issues were far from the minds of those leading the debate which was mostly about (raising) standards, presaging the interests of today; indeed, it began a period which we are still living through.<\/p>\n

\u2013 1990<\/strong> when the National Curriculum Council published\u00a0Curriculum Guidance 7<\/em>\u00a0 which set out the\u00a0aims of environmental education along with case studies and classroom activities. \u00a0This\u00a0was welcomed as a lifeline by teachers desperate to escape the conformity of the\u00a0national curriculum as it provided some renewed legitimacy for environmental education \u2013 but only as a cross-curriculum theme. \u00a0Those who knew what had been lost were not fooled.<\/p>\n

\u2013 1995<\/strong> and the launch of\u00a0Environmental Education Research<\/em>. \u00a0This is a great success, but was a Faustian bargain as it has been instrumental in ensuring that EE research rarely reaches mainstream education research audiences.<\/p>\n

\u2013 1996<\/strong> when both the Secretary of State at the Department of the Environment and the\u00a0Secretary of State at the Department of Education both appeared on a platform promoting environmental education. \u00a0Happy daze, but the warm glow quickly faded.<\/p>\n

\u2013 the early 2000s<\/strong> which saw the sustainable schools initiative and all those doorways (colourful cartoons and rainbows). \u00a0This was remarkable because it came from the DfE (or whatever it was called then). \u00a0People who might know better remember all this fondly, but we need to recall that there was no space in all this for biodiversity; not did it influence the DfE's mainstream educational policies. \u00a0Those windows were all slammed shut by the advent of the Coalition government in 2010 when the standards agenda resurfaced.<\/p>\n

\u2013 etc, etc ...<\/p>\n

Of course, there was no golden age after which everything was somehow lost, and there's no sign of one emerging anytime soon. \u00a0Although if you re-examine the early projects that are mentioned here (and there were many more), it's easy to see the momentum that has been dissipated, but what it does provide is a background against which our current predicament can be viewed, and, for example, the recommendations of the recent King's report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taking this idea seriously for a minute, and only for the UK, a number of possibilities suggest themselves, and I am ignoring all pre-1960 initiatives that many, including Keith Wheeler in 1975 in Insights into Environmental Education,\u00a0wrote about\u00a0... \u2013 the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}