Why Not Education for the Environment?

Overview & Synopsis

In this article, I.M. Robottom directs the attention of the reader to key terms that describe "environmental education"--terms that seem to embrace the various facets that emerge in discourse about environment education. Robottom argues that the characteristics of "Education for the Environment" must distinguish environmental education from other programmes associated with education "in" and "about" the environment. One can talk about education "in" the environment, education "about" the environment, education "from" the environment, and education "for" the environment, but only the last can be called environmental education. To put the explanation at its simplest, education "about" the environment correlates most closely with the guiding presupposition of individuals active in environmental education. The intention of this paper is to proffer a tentative explanation of the strength of the commitment to education about the environment in terms of taken-for-granted presuppositions about teaching and curriculum.