Environmental education: A movement in transition

ENVIRONMENTAL education for both formal (school) and non formal (out-of-school) audiences is undergoing a transition that is mostly evolutionary but partly revolutionary (9). Many practitioners in both the formal and non formal sectors maintain traditional emphases on nature study, outdoor education, and/or conservation education. Others relate their efforts to currently topical science/technology/society interactions, with emphasis on environmental concerns (II). Nature study, outdoor education, and/or conservation education enthusiasts (“tradi- tionalists”) often are perceived as latter-day followers of Henry David Thoreau (3.9, John Muir (2@, Gifford Pinchot (30), Hugh Hammond Bennett (3), and Aldo Leopold (19), with bows to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (30, John Dewey (4, Louis Agassiz (I), Anna Botsford Comstock (7), Liberty Hyde Bailey (2), Julian Smith (32), and many others-preservationists and conservation- ists, educators and resource managers, teachers and preachers, pragmatists and philosophers, humanists and scientists. The common denominator within the group is concern for humankind's relationship to the natural world, in some cases emphasizing humankind, in others nature, and in some both. Members of the other (“modern”) group typically are concerned about deterioration of environmental quality, negative effects of global and local increases …