The Star, Malaysia : Bringing conservation to the classroom

Sunday, February 11, 2001

Bringing conservation to the classroom

By Kanis Dursin

FRUSTRATED by the adults' indifference to environmental issues, green and activist groups in Jakarta are taking their campaign straight to the Indonesia's young pupils.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia is going to schools in its effort to encourage the young to participate in conserving and protecting the environment--and is also making sure the "lessons'' come with fun as well.

Indeed, movies, slides and games figure largely in the current educational outreach programme of the fund. The group even went to the extent ofreworking the popular "Snakes and Ladders'' board game into one that emphasises "environmental values.''

"The lesson is interesting and we love the games,'' says Chandra, a grade four pupil at Basuki School in Menteng, Central Jakarta, one of the schools visited recently by WWF.

"Throughout the game, we tell the students that they should help save the natural resources by saving electricity, saving the water, switching off the light every time they get out of their rooms,'' says WWF communications and education awareness manager Desi Polla.

"That is very simple, but that is very real for the students,'' he adds. "It's a fun and entertaining way of teaching,'' Polla also says of the WWF's approach. "We always show them movies about the environment, the forest and nature.''

WWF's one-month-old Belajar Bersama WWF (Learn with WWF) programme is targeted at grade four to grade six elementary school pupils in 180 schools in Jakarta and its surrounding areas--Bogor, Tangerang and Bekasi.

Asked why the fund chose to target children, Polla explains, "We believe the children will be the ones running this country in the future. If they are given information about environmental issues since their childhood, they will be more concerned on the environment than the present older generation.''

But another reason for WWF Indonesia's current tactic was the dismal result of a study it conducted among adults last year. According to the study, awareness on the importance of environmental conservation was "very low'' among the adults, who rated environmental problems number nine in their priority list.

Polla also observes, "Neither the government nor the private sector have concerns on the environment.'' This is despite Indonesia's worsening problems of pollution, wasteful consumption of energy and natural resources, destructive fishing practices and illegal logging.

For instance, the increasing incidence of landslides and floods, which claim thousands of lives each year and cause huge economic losses, are largely the result of the destruction of about 19 million ha of Indonesia's productive forests in the last three decades, say experts.

Remarks WWF Indonesia marketing and finance manager Shinta Najudjojo: "It's time for us to increase the awareness of Indonesians on environmental issues, but we realise it is very difficult to change the mindset of the grown-up people. Indonesians only get small exposure on environment in schools.''

Najudjojo says, "We have started it in Jakarta and want to implement it all over Indonesia, but it all depends on the available resources.''

The WWF Indonesia has urged the government to include environmental issues in the country's educational curriculum. Najudjojo says Indonesian students have a subject called "environment, which goes under biology and geography,'' but that it is "textbook-based.''

"The pupils just read the given information, but they have no idea,'' Polla comments. "The teachers talk about this tree, for instance, but the children don't know what kind of tree and how it looks.

"That's why,'' he says, "when we teach, we show them pictures such as photos of rhinoceros, tigers, coral reefs as well as samples, diagrams, and miniatures of animals.''

But Indra Djati Sidi, director general of elementary and secondary education at the Ministry of National Education, says there is no need to make environmental awareness a formal subject.

"You can just bring the pupils to a polluted river, or go to a factory and explain to the children that the pollution caused by the factory is damaging the environment. In this way, you are already teaching environmental values to the children,'' he says.

The WWF outreach programme, however, is showing that children do not have to be taken out of the classroom to learn how to care for tbe environment.

The movies shown as part of the learning sessions have also been hits among the children. These include The Adventure of the Dodo, in which the extinct bird, ironically enough, always does something harmful to nature.

Each of its destructive act, though, earns it a lecture from every animal it encounters.

Meantime, the WWF is also aiming to recruit university students to conduct the educational sessions with younger children. Polla says university students can "talk freely to the pupils became there is no age barrier.''--Inter Press Service