Environmental Education in the Classroom

Last Tuesday it was unanimously decided upon that all school districts in Maryland need to begin including courses on environmental education. This will only affect high schools around the state and will likely take the form of environmental education being injected into biology courses. While this is a step in the right direction I ultimately believe more needs to be done. Growing up in Florida, throughout my entire K-12 education I received some form of environmental education. If Maryland really wants to make a difference they need to adopt this model of making it more than just a small piece of some high school biology class, but a fully integrated part of the curriculum. There is no reason that environmental education can’t work its way into reading, math, or civics courses, and ultimately Maryland school districts need to start offering schools with fully integrated programs to their students. If districts don’t begin to create these kinds of schools then we are potentially not nourishing the interests and goals of the next Jacque Cousteau or Ansel Adams. Students need to be learning about their effect on the environment and how it shaped by the public and private sectors in all classes. While teaching conservation and protecting wildlife may be seen as promoting a specific agenda, I ultimately think that since both of these ideas are promoted by the EPA there is nothing wrong with bringing them into schools. This new law was a healthy start but Maryland needs to stop patting themselves on the back and start doing more.