Environmental education is a relatively new discipline. It was unknown to most people some 50 years ago. The environmental movement was formed in a short time, in comparison with other movements. Unlike other movements, it has made great progress since its establishment.
Environmental education is the process of forming values, tendencies, skills and perceptions vital for the understanding and appreciation of the complicated relation between the human being and his culture/nature within the metaphysical setting. It deals with the scarcity of the resources of the environment and the necessity for a careful consumption of these resources for the benefit of human kind and for securing a decent life.
The Palestine Wildlife Society (PWLS) established environment clubs all over Palestine which it called Eco Clubs. The clubs undertook many environmental activities that targeted not only school children and youth but also included social leaders and politicians due to the importance of the subject. The clubs introduced the concept of conservation education to help students understand the relationship between nature and humans. In cooperation with the Ministry of Education, PWLS has introduced environmental education and conservation in schools for grades seven to 10 as a separate subject.
The school occupies an important position that reflects the social needs of nature. It tries to supply students with correct and healthy habits and with the tendencies and values that achieve the safety, protection and maintenance of the environment. When students protect their school, they will eventually protect their environment. This entails several daily activities at home or at school, such as keeping the school clean, maintaining its infrastructure, protecting its internal and external environments from pollution, and monitoring and protecting the wildlife. The students’ families become also affected by all these activities.
It is important that those who work in the field of education become fully acquainted with environmental education, its past, present and future, in order to understand its nature, its development and its features. Not a sudden and new movement, as was indicated by a recent study, the development of environmental education came about following the close relationship of man with his environment and his basic needs. People gradually grasped its importance and became aware of its necessity in their daily life.
Local environmental education has become an activity that has its own branches and sub branches. Its great development and growth have stemmed from the revolutionary environmental changes that have taken place in the world in general and in Palestine in particular. These changes have been responsive to new concepts, ideas and to the multinational and international activities that have started since the 1960s.
