Heart of School Program
Brianna Aedo
International Environmental Politics
Policy Paper
Heart of School Program
Introduction
Along with the unwarrantable rise of current and future environmental devastation caused
primarily by anthropogenic practices (human-directed), must come the increasing demand, active
implementation, and physical manifestation of changes to environmental education as we know
it. From Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, to George Perkin Marsh’s Man and Nature, to Ralph
Waldo Emerson’s Nature, notions of exploring the human-environmental interaction became
more important in the realm of evolving environmental awareness, equality, and literacy. The
environmental movement recognizes the unbounded cognizance necessary to incite a new and
improved cultural relationship with the natural world. Although far more is still left to be
revealed as we balance our relationship with nature, the movement has kindled a disruption in
the fixed purposes of education by introducing holistic principles. Those who teach, teach to
instill exemplary compassionate personal behaviors which illustrate how to contemporaneously
thrive with our environment, and those who learn, observe with wide-eyed wonder as they are
captivated by the rapturous unveiling of their profound place in the macrocosm of our only
home. Despite the novelty of this elevated consciousness rotating on an axis of contemplation
about the fragility of the environment, it has yet to press further than environmental educators
simply encouraging students to have respect for nature. Still, to choose to instill philosophies that
simply inspire a respect for nature is entirely different from the wonder that is birthed only in a
compassionate relationship with nature. Arguably, respect simply does not equate to humanity
humbling their self-fulfilling conquests, beginning with teaching the generations which precede
us how to let the environment lead us into a greener future. “The goal of environmental
education is to develop a world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the
environment and its associated problems, and which has the knowledge, skills, attitudes,
Heart of School Program
motivations, and commitment to work individually and collectively toward solutions of current
problems and the prevention of new ones”. (Thomson). Considering the rapidly increasing pace
of environmental degradation, lessons on the environment that reflect the essence of such a
mission statement, should be threaded into the fabric of public education. Raising awareness will
no longer satisfy the roaring consequences that come from our maltreatment of the environment,
particularly in the United States. Even with the international sense of urgency about culturally-
rooted environmental disorder, the U.S. dangerously clings onto a predictable silence on
occasions that enabled discourse on environmental education into the public perception. There is
an exponential economic growth complex with which the Unites States resonates strongly with
despite its obvious impositions on the health of our planet and its looming “Top 3” presence year
after year in the list of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters.
