Curricular Improvements: Place Based Learning; Schools And Beyond 2

Being educated is no longer about how much you know, but about having the skills and motivation so that you can learn to assemble new knowledge whenever it is needed. It is time to reduce the content demands of national curricula and encourage schools to focus on helping each pupil develop a personal body of knowledge with skills appropriate for life at work and leisure. It is time to measure school success not just by children’s ability to answer exam questions, but by the extent to which they each demonstrate a unique passion and capability for knowledge based around their own questions and challenges of life beyond school.

It is probably safe to say that a person’s first need for knowledge will be concerned with understanding the local environment through exploring the relationship between buildings, spaces and people. By looking closely at their surroundings young and old can begin to understand how the environment is shaped and managed. In general, environmental management is concerned with understanding the structure and function of Earth as an ecosystem, as well as the ways in which humans relate to it. The environmental crisis of global warming is now the backdrop of work and play; at school and at home. Therefore, a large element of lifelong learning should be concerned with the description and monitoring of environmental changes. The aim is to predict future changes to maximise human benefit and to minimise environmental degradation due to human activities. Characteristically, environmental management is about decision-making and it is especially concerned with the process of decision-making in relation to the use of natural resources, the pollution of habitats and the modification of ecosystems.

Fundamentally, then, environmental management is a political activity because those decisions, about resources, pollution and ecosystems, are never neutral or objective; on the contrary, they are value laden and they reflect the exercise of power by particular groups over others. Moreover, in general, it is naïve to conceive of environmental management as being about simply 'management of the environment' in the sense that humans can manipulate and control the components and processes of Earth as an ecosystem. Of course, humans do exert such influences, but it is a fallacy to think that humans 'manage', for instance, populations of humpback whales. Instead, it is more accurate to say that humans may be able to make some progress towards managing human impacts on humpback whales.

Ultimately, then, conservation management systems are more concerned with controlling human activities and their impacts than with the management of other species. As such it is the thread of lifelong learning that must be at the heart of our efforts to help create a new normal about sustainable living. We need to develop an openness to different ways of knowing and understanding, particularly those associated with indigenous knowledge and belief systems. Lifelong learning creates spaces, physical and imaginative, in which this can happen. It cultivates collaborative, cross-sectoral thinking, and empowers people to become active agents of change in their communities. It raises people’s awareness of different points of view, fosters intergenerational understanding and supports collective action among different groups in society. It’s educational theme is imparting green skills through making curricular improvements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_management_system_(United_Ki…