Some of my formative memories are of playing in the mud outside my home, observing the minute world of insects, listening to birdcalls and playing with the neighbourhood cats. Growing up on the residential campus of Rishi Valley School, located in rural Andhra Pradesh, I had the privilege of a childhood immersed in nature.
Closeness to nature was an integral element of the holistic philosophy of education envisioned by the philosopher-teacher, Jiddu Krishnamurti, who established the school. For him, a relationship with nature is also essential for developing a relationship with and awareness of oneself and others, and a step towards awakening intelligence.
Long before we are introduced to the ‘environment’ as a subject of study or a site of crisis, we encounter it as the soil under our feet, flowing streams of water after rains, insects and creepy-crawlies that wander into our homes, and the changing colours and moods of the seasons. As we encounter the wider world, whether in a rural or an urban setting, we are already forming a relationship with the environment and natural world. Formal environmental education ought to protect and deepen this relationship.
When I look back on my school years, several things stand out as having enriched my feeling for, engagement with and knowledge of the environment around me. In junior classes, we were often taken out for nature walks to observe, draw and write about what we saw. As slightly older students, we participated in activities that helped maintain and replenish the ecosystems that sustained our lives. For instance, we engaged in litter picking and garbage segregation; participated in digging rainwater runoff channels that are connected to a larger percolation tank for groundwater recharge; we were involved in sowing seeds and harvested fruits and vegetables from our school vegetable garden for use in the school kitchen.
All of this brought us in close contact with and oriented our attention to the environment, the ways in which it shaped our lives, as well as the ways in which we affected the environment. They also instilled an early sense of care and responsibility for the environment that continued to grow as we gained knowledge of the complex factors behind wider issues such as biodiversity loss, deforestation, resource depletion, and climate change.
Working with the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) to develop environmental education books for children, I now look back on my own experiences from the perspective of an environmental educator. Last week, I had the opportunity to attend CSE’s annual Green Schools Carnival and Awards Ceremony. As an adult who sometimes struggles to hold onto the sense of beauty and wonder that is a gift of nature, in the face of despair or cynicism at the state of the world and its environment, there was something refreshing and hopeful in seeing students and educators from schools across India come together to celebrate their sincere efforts towards creating more sustainable communities.
Several schools shared inspiring stories ranging from setting up fully solar-powered campuses to growing community gardens that invited biodiverse life. Each of these stories displayed an effort to take environmental education seriously, beyond the confines of the classroom and theoretical knowledge, by involving students in the daily practices of sustainability.
In 2005, the National Curriculum Framework of India took the important step of introducing environmental education as an integral and mandatory component of the school curriculum. It was also at this crucial juncture that the CSE’s flagship Green Schools Programme (GSP) was launched to supplement and enrich, through its experiential teaching-learning model, environmental education in schools across the country. In 2006, the programme conferred the first Green School awards to twenty schools from around the country. Twenty years later, the programme today has close to 9,000 schools enrolled in its annual audit cycle.
Organised along six verticals — Air, Energy, Food, Land, Water and Waste — the GSP audit invites students and teachers in schools to observe their environment closely, measure their resource use and report on their impact on each of these six aspects of the environment. With this knowledge and benchmarking of their impact, schools have the opportunity and incentive to act further on particular areas to enhance their overall sustainability.
In this way, the audit attunes participating students to a heightened awareness of their relationship with the environment and instils in them a greater sense of stewardship towards it.
It is our hope that increasing numbers of schools will participate in the Green Schools Programme, and that this will encourage young people growing up today in becoming sensitive to nature, knowledgeable about the environment and committed to turning the tide towards a more sustainable life for us all — humans and non-humans — who share this planet.