Address by the Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, MP, at the National Environmental Education Project (NEEP-GET) colloquium, Mamelodi Environmental Centre, Pretoria
27 January 2005
Chairperson
National and provincial education officials
Ladies and gentlemen
It gives me great pleasure to open the National Environmental Education Project (NEEP-GET) colloquium.
The aim of the colloquium is to celebrate and to share the achievements of the project, which has been instrumental in inserting environmental education into our curriculum and learning programmes.
The lessons learnt from the project will be reviewed at this colloquium, and I hope that we will incorporate these lessons into our planning for the future.
Our constitution links human and environmental rights. Our bill of rights gives us the right “to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations, through reasonable legislative and other measures”. Our aim is to prevent ecological decline, to prevent pollution, and to promote conservation. In line with the constitution, the national curriculum statement emphasises the relationship between social justice and a healthy environment.
This is where a professional development project like the NEEP-GET comes into its own. NEEP-GET has established professional development programmes for learning facilitators in eight provinces over the last four years. The programmes have concentrated on environmental learning as a key element of curriculum change. The project has supported learning facilitators in fulfilling their roles of supporting teachers as they go about implementing the national curriculum. The project has created a much-needed learning space for our officials.
It is of utmost importance that we empower our officials to instil in our teachers the professional confidence they need to perform their function as the key agents for improving learning among our children. We will not achieve the sort of learning we desire for the children of our country without teachers so empowered, and no matter the quality of school facilities and the excellence of learning materials.
Social justice education has not been a key part of teacher preparation in our pre-service programmes. We need to examine the possibility of more carefully integrating a human rights perspective into the curriculum of teacher training. This will obviate the need for special development programmes and will build a full awareness in our educators of the link between everything we learn and the survival of the species.
Environmental education is not just about trees, soil, and water. Environmental education is about the impact of the lifestyle choices we make, about the decisions we take that affect the air we breathe and the food we eat. We have a responsibility to teach our future adult citizens to make better lifestyle choices not only for themselves but also for their families, their local communities, and in the end the global biophysical environment that forms the foundation of our existence.
The United Nations special committee on human security has given attention to the issues of sustainable development from a human security perspective. The committee confirmed that many communities in different parts of the world have been exploited. For example, the exploitation of oil in many parts of the developing world, the displacement of communities, and the destruction of natural forests by greedy developers have impacted negatively on poor communities and destabilised our world environment.
Our programmes, therefore, must clearly illustrate the direct link between human security and sustainable development. In fact, the term environmental education may be somewhat misleading, because it draws attention to the fauna and flora rather than directly to the issues of human rights that are the core purpose of mounting such programmes. Learners and educators have to understand through our programmes that our expectation is the alteration of the relationship between human beings and the environment.
Making different life style choices, choices that help to sustain the environment, requires many skills - like critical thinking, problem solving and complex decision making, all of which can only be developed over time. In this regard, we need to challenge our learners to explore and become aware of the social and environmental issues in their local settings. If educators see these environmental and social issues as curriculum opportunities, learners can develop knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes that enable them to make different lifestyle choices.
In December 2002 the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the decade of education for sustainable development for the period 2005-2014, emphasising that education is an indispensable element for achieving sustainable development. In the draft international implementation scheme, UNESCO highlights the importance of reorienting existing education programmes in basic education, developing public awareness of sustainability issues and training. That is what this programme seeks to achieve.
In this implementation scheme, UNESCO also defines a partnership approach to the decade of education for sustainable development and reference is made to partnerships at three levels, namely the local (sub-national), regional and international. The NEEP-GET project, located in the Department of Education, has cooperated with other government departments and NGOs at local level, with environmental education projects in Namibia and Lesotho at regional level, and with DANIDA, who are the funders of the project, at the international level.
The South African government’s task of transforming our education into a world-class system is huge and challenging. It also has many competing strands that require partnership and innovation. Hence our cooperation with various partners here and abroad. This project has allowed such cooperation and assisted us in achieving the goals that have been set for South African education. The NEEP-GET has been instrumental in institutionalising environmental education in the curriculum and in departmental structures. This has been achieved through professional development, resource development and cooperation with partners. Some of the resources we developed include guideline booklets such as the ones that are being distributed today and learning area booklets that we intend to distribute to all primary schools in the country.
The project has worked closely with the Departments of Water Affairs and Forestry, Health and Environmental Affairs and Tourism as well as some parastatals to coordinate environmental education at school level.
The NEEP-GET has also facilitated the creation of positions in provincial education departments by carrying the costs of the Environmental Education coordinators while the department prepared itself to carry the responsibility in the long term.
This colloquium is a celebration of the successes of teachers, learning facilitators, and project staff from all around the country. We will hear the success stories of teachers from rural KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, who all are doing inspiring work in their schools.
We will also hear stories from learning facilitators, and how they have supported and implemented the National Curriculum Statement (Grades R-9) in the light of the continuing professional development they experienced through the NEEP-GET.
All these stories make this colloquium a celebration of committed attempts by ordinary educators to make quality education accessible to the most marginalised sections of our people.
We appreciate the contribution that everyone involved in the project has made, particularly the teachers and officials who have taken part in the professional development programme, the environmental education coordinators and the formative monitoring team. Partners like other government departments, parastatals, and NGOs have been indispensable to the project. We are indeed grateful to Ibis who have assisted with the implementation of the project and to the Danish government who made the funding available to us.
I am now pleased to declare this colloquium open and wish you a fruitful conference and trust that your deliberations will contribute to our quest for quality education for all.
I thank you.