Theme: The Environment

Key Learning:

After this week I now have a more in depth knowledge on what sustainability is and understand why we need to educate and show children just how important it is. Although  the overuse of resources has improved living standards in many countries, it is also damaging our living systems. We need to find a way where people can live a good quality life without damaging the quality of life of future generations. (Scottish Government, 2012) This really made me think about how our actions today can impact peoples quality of life years from now.

Learning about the environment, has made me see how big a topic this is and how many different issues it covers. Before when I thought about the environment I immediately associated it with nature and recycling. I now understand that it is so much more than this and focuses not just on our surroundings but also the community, people and human’s relationships with nature.

Studying the urban environment highlighted to me how harmful these large cities can be. They not only account for 70% of carbon emissons but also keep buliding on more and more of our natural landscape. However whilst reading the EEA Extract on Urban Environment I realised that although urban environments cause a lot of damage they also have many benefits. Cities are the centre of Europes economy and where the majority of our wealth comes from. Also the ‘proximity of people, businesses and services provides opportunities to build a more resource- efficient Europe.’

Impact on my views/lifestyle/practice:

I enjoyed the outdoor activities we completed during one of our workshops as it is not something I would normally do. It made you look up and examine the world around you and see things that you would normally miss. After this week I now see the benefits of children learning about the environment.  I think it would be beneficial to children as it would allow them to explore their local environment and develop natural curiosity about places. Aswell as helping them to build positive attitudes and a global perspective. This topic is now an area that I would want to teach whilst out at schools as I think its very interesting and has so many possibilities of different activities and ways to teach it.