Environmental education with a focus on climate change
“If education alone can not transform society, without society do not change.” Paulo Freire.
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Seeking to talk about environmental education with a focus on climate change yesterday was held an event that brought together various UN agencies, including UNICEF, UNESCO, Younga, Unitar to present projects that have been undertaken in countries like Brazil, Zambia, Vietnam, among others. The goal was to show that environmental education should be done in all age range (children, youth and adults), and in various spaces such as schools, community associations and institutions.
To tell about the Zambian project it was conducted a video conference with Bringhton Kaoma, one of the young people trained by the project that acts as a facilitator in the community, in his speech he said that climate change is already a reality in Zambia being necessary adaptation and mitigation, and that environmental education is extremely important to educate and enlighten people on the subject.
A project that caught our attention was held by UNESCO in Brazil, the idea of teh project is to work environmental education with a focus on climate change in schools as a cross-cutting issue, and it is necessary to train teachers from various formations to act multidisciplinary, the pilot teacher training project was held in the city of Itajaí, Santa Catarina. We talked to Mariana Alcalay who explained us how the project was implemented. How the project was implemented in Brazil? We started this project in climate change and sustainable development for teachers which was implemented in Itajaí, SC, because the floods they suffer on the city. It is a pilot project, we trained 100 teachers from public schools in partnership with the Ministry of Education and the municipal board of education.
We try to do this training at all levels teachers: kindergarten, elementary and secondary, also had school coordinators, the secretariat people, to set up a project where everyone was involved.
The course empowers and gives tools for the teachers themselves to introduce the subject in the classroom. Not only science teachers, but is a multidisciplinary course, having participated teachers of science,
Portuguese, sport, languages, arts, so they can treat the theme multidisplinary and become multipliers of this knologe. We consider that climate change and sustainable development is a cross-cutting issue that has to be treated for all areas.
Is there any intention of MEC to put that content on a permanent basis in the curriculum? Yes, we are still under discussion, MEC is very interested, they supported us and next year we will start the implementation throughout the city of Itajaí, but at national level we are in negotiation with them, would be a project that would include other themes and other courses.
If a school wants to enter this project ia that possible? Anyone interested can contact us, usually UNESCO implements in partnership with departments of the gornament, there is no possibility of an individual and direct agreement between school and Unesco, only via municipal departments of education.
