International Collaboration in the Field of Environmental and Geographical Education

Abstract

The aim of environmental education is clear, worthy and just. During the last twenty years it has become commonly acknowledged, that the ultimate goal of environmental education is to produce environmentally literate and responsible citizens, who can make decisions that will help check and solve many of the environmental problems that will arise in the present and near future (Knapp 2000; Åhlberg and Dillon, 1999). However, the critics have pointed mainly to the difficulties in implementing the idea and activities of environmental education in school curricula on a practical level and the utmost varying meanings given to it by teachers. Also, the multidisciplinary approach of environmental education makes it difficult to adjust the substance and methods to any school subject. It has far too often happened that good intentions have turned completely the other way round than was planned (Lidstone, 2000). As Knapp strongly stresses, some teacher’s guides of environmental education urge students to take political and social stances to the environment without educating them all point of views. This unethical pedagogy can lead to peer pressure activism and not to that kind of responsible action as was meant in the first place.