By Dr. Alec Bodzin, Lehigh University Environmental Initiative

Are citizens in the United States environmentally literate? Are our schools doing a good job preparing our children to be environmentally literate? When our kids read in the newspaper about issues pertaining to energy use, global climate change, and pollution, do they have a deep meaningful understanding about these issues or just some superficial awareness?

While it seems that environmental issues are often displayed in the media, a recent Roper research report showed that most Americans believe they know more about the environment than they actually do.

According to this report, 45 million Americans think the ocean is a source of fresh water; 120 million think spray cans still have CFCs in them even though CFCs were banned in 1978; another 120 million people think disposable diapers are the leading problem with landfills when they actually represent about 1 percent of the problem; and 130 million believe that hydropower is America's top energy source, when it accounts for just 10 percent of the total.

Even more disconcerting, the Roper report states there is little difference in environmental knowledge levels between the average American and those who sit on governing bodies, town councils, and in corporate board rooms, and whose decisions often have wider ramifications on the environment.

On top of this, Richard Louv in his book, “Last Child in the Woods”, has called our attention to a recent widespread problem in our country called "nature-deficit disorder." Simply put, many American children are not outside playing and discovering nature as compared to past generations. Instead, recreational playtime for many children is spent indoors messing around within a virtual world on the Internet, watching TV, or being kept indoors by parents for safety concerns. The time is ripe to promote environmental literacy in our schools.

The creation of an environmentally literate citizenry is considered a primary goal of environmental education. Environmental education goals include developing citizens that are aware of and concerned about the environment and its associated problems. To achieve these goals, our K-12 schools need to provide each and every student with opportunities to acquire knowledge, values, attitudes and commitment to protect and improve the environment.

There are different levels to environmental literacy. The lowest level involves simple environmental awareness. Most people have heard of water and air pollution, energy efficiency, climate change, habitat loss, and solid waste. Current school structures with high accountability state testing in the sciences and social sciences will ensure that classroom learners are exposed to terminology used in environmental studies and understand ecological concepts.

Unfortunately, some states today only have mandatory testing in mathematics, reading and writing. Consequently, as recent reports have shown, many elementary schools offer about half as much science instruction as they did before the No Child Left Behind law was enacted and school time for social studies learning occurs much less often. Pennsylvania students will take the PSSA test in science for the first time in 2008.

Another level of environmental literacy involves taking action with personal conduct that contributes favorably to the environment. These are often simple things people can do such as turning off the light switch or turning off the computer to save electricity, taking alternative transportation to work such as the bus or riding a bicycle or purchasing a hybrid vehicle to conserve gasoline, turning off the faucet while you brush your teeth or shave to conserve water, and reducing the amount solid waste you produce by reusing containers, recycling products, and buying items with less packaging materials.

While many environmentally conscious classroom teachers do a good job advocating such action, the actual practice of students is less likely to occur unless adults at home model and reinforce these practices. School-based activities can model good environmental practices.

Classroom curricula can integrate environmental activities into the traditional disciplines by creating compost gardens and wildlife habitat areas – students can write about their experiences with journaling activities.

Monitoring and reducing the waste stream for each classroom, monitoring and reducing the school’s energy use, and using free Web-based tools such as “ecological footprint calculators” to determine environmental impacts of daily activities are each classroom experiences that align to standards in mathematics.

A number of schools across the United States have been using the environment as an integrated context (EIC) for learning across the curriculum. Evidence gathered from a Pew Charitable Trust study of 40 EIC schools indicate that students learn more effectively with an environment-based context than with a traditional disciplinary approach to school subject learning. According to this study, “EIC appears to significantly improve student performance in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies, and enriches the overall school experience.”

While the EIC framework requires substantial change across the entire school-based curricula, environmental integration within the traditional school disciplines is an excellent starting place.

For example, in a fourth grade math lesson, a teacher tells his or her students to write down every item they throw away (food, milk container, plastic wrap, styrofoam tray, etc.) during lunch. The trash is collected in large bags and the height, width, and length of the bag is measured. When the students return from lunch, they share the items they discarded and then develop a way to compile this information. A chart displaying the total amount of each trash item type discarded is created. The students review their data and answer the following questions:

· If 10 students at a cafeteria table threw away enough trash to fill one bag, how many trash bags did our entire class fill? How much space would it take up? How much trash would be thrown away for each grade level in our school per day?

· Select an item on our chart. Calculate the amount of this item our class would throw away in a week, month, and school year. How much space would this trash take up?

· How much of this item would the entire fourth grade throw away in a week, month, and school year? What about the entire school?

· How could we reduce our amount of trash at lunch?

· Is anything recyclable?

A more comprehensive level of environmental literacy goes beyond awareness and personal action. It involves a deep knowledge and understanding of environmental concepts and skills that are at a much higher level to understand environmental issues, some that are quite complex.

This level of environmental literacy involves essential 21st century skills including problem-solving, critical thinking skills, and creative thinking. It involves hands-on experiences in a laboratory or in a field setting. It involves deep understanding of complex problems and careful consideration of a range of solutions and consequences.

This level of environmental literacy involves investigating such questions as: Why is biodiversity important? Does it really matter if there aren’t so many species? What are the impacts of global climate change? How does human activity contribute to global climate change? How will the world’s current population growth affect our planet’s natural resources during the next 30-100 years?

A major challenge to educators in school settings is to provide meaningful learning experiences that promote environmental literacy at this comprehensive level.

The current political climate of high-stakes school testing in reading, writing, and mathematics is a major obstacle to help learners become aware and knowledgeable about the environment and foster environmental ethics that will have long lasting impacts.

Reading about the environment promotes literacy. Reading and “doing” promotes environmental literacy. For environmental literacy to be realized, all K-12 students need to be actively engaged in interdisciplinary environmental education curricula that emphasizes student-directed scientific discovery of their local environment. School curriculum needs to provide developmentally appropriate environmental experiences and activities at each grade level.

Promoting environmental literacy is a core mission of the Lehigh Environmental Initiative. We advocate the integration of well-design, curricular environmental education materials at all grade levels in classroom settings. As part of our education and outreach mission, we have developed a website, EnviroSci Inquiry - that contains a variety of curricular activities and instructional resources designed to promote environmental literacy. Activities and curriculum supports range from exploring one’s watershed area to investigating complex environmental issues.

The “Environmental Issues” section contains a range of curricular activities to actively engage learners to think deeply about issues pertaining to the environment. Investigating environmental issues involves analyzing data and evidence to formulate explanations. It also involves identifying solutions and taking positive action to resolve environmental issues.

For younger learners, the activity, Environmental Laws and Regulations in Pennsylvania, presents learners with environmental ethical dilemmas that involve critical thinking and decision-making. For more advanced learners, we’ve created a series of authentic role-playing environmental issues-based approach simulations. In these simulations, students investigate a real-world controversial issue from different perspectives.

After they complete their investigation, a public forum or debate is conducted to determine the next course of action on the issue. Investigations include: What is the most efficient and effective way to treat and clean up abandoned mine drainage in Pennsylvania? How can we change our land use practices to avoid the negative effects of sprawl? Who should be responsible for the investigation and remediation of the Stockertown sinkholes? Classroom debates on these issues offer learners a forum to think critically about the role that science plays in societal issues. These simulations also acknowledge the connection between the environmental sciences and the policy decisions individuals make about current social issues.

American schools at all levels need to do a much better job preparing our students to be environmentally literate. Students completing elementary school need to know more than a basic awareness of ecological concepts in order to pass a high-stakes test. Young children need to develop behaviors and actions that contribute favorably to the environment.

By the time students are in upper elementary school, they need to develop skills to think critically about environmental issues. In middle and high school, school curriculum needs to provide learners with experiences to be deeply involved in understanding complex environmental problems and issues that will not only affect them today, but in the years to come.

Dr. Alec Bodzin is Associate Professor of Science Education at Lehigh University’s Technology-based Teacher Education Program and leads the Environmental Initiative at Lehigh University. He can be contacted at 610-758-5095 or by sending email to: amb4@lehigh.edu .

NewsClip: Op-Ed: Take the Classroom Outdoors

11/23/2007