David Hawkins, an educator at the University of Colorado, often performs the simple test of examining bulletin boards and physical materials being used by pupils to determine what is happening in the classroom with regard to environmental education. It is rare that he finds any significant clues as to the nature of that specific physical and social environment surrounding a school. While there may be a map or two, most of the material is generalized and representative of any area of the country. Usually such physical evidence is a good indicator of the teacher's approach, of the children's activities, and hence of the kinds of learning experiences that take place in that classroom. A self-contained classroom isolated from the surrounding community provides a sterile atmosphere for learning about environmental problems, whether one approaches them from the point of view of their social or physical basis. But perhaps more importantly, this kind of classroom environment may impart implicit messages about the relevance of environmental concerns, messages with obviously negative implications for the way in which those children will perceive their role in effecting environmental change. If we are to change the behavior of children through formal education, which is precisely the challenge before us, we obviously must understand and change some rather basic aspects of the school environment. Furthermore, education will have to be organized around the goal of teaching children how to be effective agents for change so that they in turn may participate in the social processes which shape their communities and their lives. Environmental education, when viewed in these terms, becomes a fundamental part of the school experience.

Much of the quite extensive effort at environmental education which has been mounted in recent years has been at quite a different level. The main thrust has been to

teach children about the natural environment through interpretation of the landscape and the processes which change it. But this ecological emphasis, important though it may be in its own right, has been mounted from outside the school system and has seldom come to grips with the broader social issues which now concern us. Ecology as curriculum content is primarily useful in that it relates a great deal of diverse information about the environment and its processes. I do not question for a minute the importance of environmental learning in this sense, but in competition with other subjects it must remain a relatively distinct part of the curriculum and as such represents only a limited gain.

What is needed is a far more eclectic approach to education, an approach which would embrace many new kinds of learning experiences. These new experiences would be selected to involve students in the critical analysis of, among other things, the social values and interactions that underlie environmental degradation. A high priority would be placed on the processes of inquiry and problem solving but the focus would be outward into the community and on actual problems affecting the lives of the students.

Research by Students. A good example of this kind of environmental education is the water pollution research problem at the Tilton School in New Hampshire. There the students learn about the science and technology of pollution by doing research on the water quality in local streams and lakes. In addition to learning a good deal of basic science, they also produce data that are useful to the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration. But rather than stopping at the academic

*See page 12 for a further description of this and other Foundation-supported environmental education programs.

boundary of their subject, the students then investigate relevant legislation on water quality, and finally pursue the economic and political consequences of the enforcement of that legislation. All of this is done using actual local problems as a case study. The behavioral objectives of the Tilton work have to do with the ability of the students to carry out a research program, produce acceptable data, and analyze actual environmental problems. I can only surmise that the implicit messages that are communicated to the students doing such work will have an important influence on their roles as individuals in society and with their responsibilities in relationship to their environment.

There are, of course, all sorts of barriers to initiating such open-ended work in the schools. The basic structure and organization of the classroom are often inimical to environmental education and teachers lack the training and experience to organize such programs. It is far easier to teach about the environment as a generalized subject with the support of textbooks and films than it is to conduct an open-ended inquiry into the specific problems of an actual community. It is also easier to relegate the entire responsibility for environmental education to specialists from outside the school system, perhaps at the end of a bus ride at a local nature center, than it is to embrace environmental education as a fundamental aspect of the overall curriculum.

Community Involvement. Changes in education are taking place, however, and there are trends developing which should make it easier to pursue environmental education in the classroom. For instance, in many urban areas there is a drive toward greater community involvement in the schools. This is more than a matter of control over the administration of the school, although that may be the prime

motivation behind the movement. In fact, community education makes it possible to draw upon many kinds of community resources, both human and institutional, to support the educational program of the school. In Philadelphia at the Parkway School, in Baltimore's Dunbar High School, and in Chicago's Waller Cooley School, programs are either being developed or are underway in which entire segments of the curriculum are conducted in agencies of the municipal government, in businesses and in local cultural institutions such as zoos and museums. Efforts are also being made to involve representatives from the community and from local colleges in classes taking place within the school itself. The potential for environmental education is obviously far greater under these conditions than it has been in the traditionally more restrictive school. But this potential remains to be fulfilled and the opportunities for environmental education may not be recognized as such even in the schools themselves.

While the examples I have cited above happen to be high schools, there are similar trends developing in elementary schools. Here the line of attack is to break down the traditional concept of the self-contained classroom which has always limited the kinds of learning experiences provided by the school. Team teaching, to the extent that it involves teachers with a variety of backgrounds working in close cooperation with each other, has cracked the classroom wall. Further inroads are being made by schools experimenting with open-structure or with the integrated day*, an approach to education based on the work of John Dewey and Jean Piaget, but developed most fully in British primary schools. Here, *The term "integrated day" refers to a way of organizing the classroom without the formal constraints imposed by fixed-length classes dealing with specialized, academic disciplines. It also implies an inductive, individualized approach to learning.

as in the high schools, we are dealing with a potential for imaginative programming which has not been widely recognized, particularly on this side of the Atlantic.

The significance of the integrated day for environmental education is profound indeed. It places an emphasis on an eclectic environmentalism based on the heavy use of materials found in the local environment ranging from building rubble to living plants and animals. It combines classrooms, breaking down the walls so that children can work together in teams on problems which interest them and which at the same time provide valuable learning experiences. It disregards the traditional subject area boundaries and follows a unified approach to learning which much more closely approximates the child's actual perception of his environment. It drops the rigid schedule enforced by periodic bells and allows the use of blocks of time to pursue problems which could not even be tackled in a more traditional classroom. In fact, after seeing an integrated day in process, it is hard to imagine how effective environmental education could be pursued in the elementary school under any less open-structured conditions.

An integrated day affords an opportunity to achieve certain behavioral objectives through the kinds of learning experiences that it provides for children. Thus the excavation of a pile of building rubble treated as a neighborhood archeological site might be used to teach children a good deal about exploratory techniques and problem solving as well as about the history, climate, demography, and so forth, of their community. But, in addition, the fact that the teaching deals with the immediate environment and involves children in an open-ended exploration of those surroundings carries an implication for the children that their own environment and their individual perceptions of it really count. This kind of individualized, child-centered learn

ing which deals with the immediate physical surroundings certainly develops different and presumably more positive attitudes, values, and behavior toward the environment than the traditional, more structured approaches. Furthermore we can make the assumption that programs which involve students in attempts to solve actual environmental problems can engender a social commitment that may have a lasting effect on their behavior.

The more successful environmental programs have undoubtedly contributed to the willingness of the schools to open the classroom doors to new experiences. The great public concern over environmental degradation is now reinforcing that movement and the result may be the best chance yet for introducing behaviorally effective educational programs. To realize this opportunity schools must make use of that particular environment perceived by their students. In effect they must teach through the environment using the community as a source of learning experiences rather than about the environment as a generalized object of study. Furthermore, if schools are to affect the behavior of children in order to moderate society's impact on the environment, they must lead students to explore the social interactions and the whole system of human values, concerns, and assumptions which underlie our behavior. After all, the physical limitations of natural systems are constant, and technology is only effective in alleviating the pressures we place on our environment when we use it to that purpose. The key to preserving the human environment is inescapably the collective behavior of individual citizens. In the final analysis, the success of environmental education will be measured in terms of its ability to change the behavior of society.

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Ford Foundation Grants

in Environmental Education

A number of schools and other educational institutions have received Foundation assistance for programs that make imaginative use of the physical environment as a resource for learning. Patterned in part after environmental programs developed in the British primary schools, particularly the Nuffield science curriculum, these programs differ from the usual "nature studies" in that they deal with man in his environment and make heavy use of both human resources and physical materials found in the immediate local surroundings. In an urban setting, for example, the children explore the physical features of the city streets -such as patterns of traffic or water gushing from a hydrant-and then return to their classrooms to study these phenomena. In the process, they use and learn the traditional academic skills and subjects. The local environment approached in this manner becomes a vehicle for teaching skills and not just the subject of study.

The objectives of these programs are both pedagogic and social: to capture the interest of students by making use of their own perceptions and experiences and to channel this interest into constructive learning patterns, while at the same time stimulating a more sensitive awareness of the environment.

Among the environmental education programs for which grants have been made are:

Wave Hill Center for Environmental Studies (New York): In cooperation with the Herbert H. Lehman College, a branch of the City University of New York, the center is seeking to introduce the physical environment into the regular curriculum to stimulate the intellectual curiosity and growth of students in four elementary schools in Harlem and south Bronx. The project trains teachers by involving them

in the preparation of work units that build on the experiences gained by the students in investigating the environment. A three-year grant of $150,000, approved in 1969.

Tilton School (New Hampshire): Patterned after an advanced science project developed for twelfth grade students at the University School in Cleveland, a Tilton school program is engaging students in the solution of one of the country's most pressing environmental problems - water pollution. Under the leadership of Joseph Chadbourne, now at Tilton, the Cleveland students collected and tested water from local rivers, reported their findings to a state watershed district, and testified before the House Public Works Committee on pollution in the Lake Erie region. A one-year grant of $65,000, approved in 1969, is assisting the training of teachers and students from various parts of the country in the techniques that were developed by the Cleveland students.

Althouse College of Education, University of Western Ontario: One of the first centers to draw upon the British primary school experience, Althouse College is working with teachers and principals in Ontario elementary schools to develop a broadened version of the Nuffield science program. A three-year grant of $223,000, approved in 1970, is training teachers to use local materials, resources, and experiences to deal with comprehensive environmental concerns. The program will benefit teachers in this country through exchange programs and through the production of films and other materials.

International Center for Educational Development: The center, a teacher advisory service to public schools in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, is seeking to exploit the opportunities for environmental education in experimental classrooms. The project focuses

on four elementary schools in a wide range of local settings-in the urban-ghetto area of Watts, in a rapidly changing suburban area, in a suburban-rural environment, and in a small rural community-so as to offer a maximum number of topics and problems for exploration. A three-year grant of $140,000, approved in 1970.

National Audubon Society: To find ways of relating the educational programming at its five nature centers more closely to the needs of classroom teachers, the society is conducting workshops in cooperation with the Educational Development Center in Newton, Mass., and the Bank Street College of Education in New York for its nature center education staff and public school teachers and administrators. The objectives are to make the centers a more vital educational resource, to develop working relationships with local school systems, and to devise new approaches to elementary school science education. A three-year grant of $250,000, approved in 1969.

In addition, the Foundation has made grants to Portland (Oregon) Public Schools for an environmental science program for underachieving students that makes use of the Willamette River as an outdoor laboratory; to the Massachusetts Audubon Society to introduce environmental education in the heavily Negro Roxbury and Dorchester sections of Boston; and to the WGBH Educational Foundation for a pilot series of six television programs on the urban environment for fourth through sixth grade students. Entitled "If You Live in America, Where Do You Live?" the television series is scheduled to be shown over local public television stations during the summer of 1970.

The above grants are part of a comprehensive program in resources and environment in which the Foundation has been engaged

since 1964. (Previously its support in the field had been channeled through Resources for the Future.) The focus of this program, in its broadest terms, is the perception of, the concern over, and the effort to do something about problems that arise out of the conflict between man's need to exploit his environment for economic use and the ability of natural systems to adjust to the consequences. Grants have been made for the training of resource managers and scientists in ecology, for the education of public and official opinion on the nature of the environmental crisis, for the acquisition of parks and open space, and for the development of new scientific methods for coping with the complexities of natural and man-made systems. Additional information concerning the Foundation's interest and activities in this field is contained in the booklet, Ford Foundation Grants in Resources and Environment, and in the reprint, Managing Knowledge to Save the Environment, by McGeorge Bundy. Copies may be obtained by writing the Ford Foundation, Office of Reports, 320 East 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10017.