Environmental Education

One of the few things that I remember in public high school was a class pertaining to environmental education. Not only was the teacher very good at introducing the topic and discussing what environmental education means, but the class was also interesting since it was such a foreign concept from writing, reading and math, but at the same time environmental education is just as (if not more) important as writing, reading and math skills. We only have one planet, so we need to know the proper steps and what we can do to save this planet. 

For this blog post, I decided to take a look at the website for the North American Association for Environmental Education, which is one of the largest organizations in the United States that advocates for environmental care and protection through spreading information related to the environment to students. I was specifically interested in their link pertaining to environmental literacy. Literacy means the ability to read and write, so I was naturally curious of how this would apply to environmental education. Environmental literacy is somewhat similar to the ability to read and write, but instead of knowing or having the knowledge to read and write, environmental literacy is understanding and knowing what steps need to be taken to make the environment better. 

The North American Association for Environmental Education defines environmental literacy as: "someone who, both individually and together with others, makes informed decisions concerning the environment; is willing to act on these decisions to improve the well-being of other individuals, societies, and the global environment; and participates in civic life".