Environmental Education

What is the environmental education?

Environmental education is a process to build human population in the world that conscious and care with environment in totality, and all the problem which is interlaced with it. And also a process to creat society who have knowladge, skill, attitude and behaviour, motivation and comitmen cooperation for solve any problem in environmentaal and avoid the new problem to happen. (UNESCO, Tbilisi declaration, 1977)

Environmental education is an important factor to minimalized destruction of environmental and an important instrument to get human source which can execute construction princip.

Environmental education is an expedient to increase understanding and carring of societyin looking for solution and combating of envirronment problem.

Environmental education is not changing situation, from worse to better in a short time, buut it need a long time, a process and source.

Principles of Environmental Education are:

1. Consider the environment as a totality - natural and artificial, are technological and social (economic, political, cultural, historical, moral, aesthetic);

2. It is a process that runs continuously and throughout life, beginning in pre-school age, and progressed to the stage of formal and non-formal education;

3. Having the nature of interdisciplinary approach, by pulling / or retrieve the contents of the specific characteristics of each discipline so as to enable a holistic approach and a balanced perspective.

4. Examining (examine) the major environmental issues from the perspective of local, national, regional and international levels, so that students can receive insight about the environmental conditions in other geographical areas;

5. Giving the pressure on the current environmental situation and potential environmental situations, to include consideration of the historical perspective;

6. Promote the value and importance of the cooperation of local, national and international levels to prevent and solve environmental problems;

7. Explicitly consider / take into account the environmental aspects of development and growth plans;

8. Enable learners to have a role in planning their learning experience, and provide opportunities for them to make decisions and accept the consequences of those decisions;

9. Connect (relate) sensitivity to the environment, knowledge, and skills to solve problems at every stage of the value clarification age, but for young age (first years) are given special emphasis on environmental sensitivity to the environment where they live;

10. Help learners to locate (discover), the symptoms and the causes of environmental problems;

11. Give the pressure of the complexity of environmental problems, requiring the ability to think critically with the skills to solve problems.

12. Utilize diverse learning situations (learning environment) and a variety of approaches in learning about and from the environment with a strong emphasis on activities that are practical and direct experience (first - hand experience).

Management and use of resources and environmental services must be preceded by a thorough assessment of the resources and their ecosystem services within, to set goals and objectives utilization, then plan and manage all activities of its utilization to achieve optimal and sustainable development. Use of natural resources must be wisely and ensure their availability on an ongoing basis while maintaining and increasing the value and the variety.

Adaptation of man to nature is a reflection of the activity and the relationship of man to nature in the use of space. With growing desires, demands and technological welfare of the human beings trying to master nature. With the advancement of technology, human motion in space utilization of resources are increasingly expanding. Based on the process then the resulting new paradigm in environmental management is the sustainable development.

The purpose of environmental education is to create a society that is conscious of the environment so that environmental damage can be reduced.

Environmental education can be started from the smallest community of the family. The family has an important role in providing environmental education to their children. Most concrete form of education in the family is to teach children to membuaang up on the trash that has been provided.

The family has an important role in environmental education because the family is spearheading education for their children. When an early age children are taught with a good understanding of the environment, the environmental education of school will go well and got a good reception from the students, and In the end the damage and environmental problems caused by the activities of daily life can be reduced or even avoided. So the existing natural resources can continue to be preserved and can finally be enjoyed and passed on to future generations